Thicker Than Water
by Xue1
Summary: Political scheming, uncertain familial relationships, and the growing threat of war. Ever wondered what happened to Inuyasha's mother's side of the family? IKa, MS.
1. Sowing the Seeds

Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha or any of its associated characters. This disclaimer shall apply for the entire length of this fanfiction. 

**Thicker Than Water**

_"The pomp and elation_

_the duty and vocation_

_the blood of the hybrid_

_it's just a recipe."_

- "Recipe for Hate," Bad Religion

**Chapter One: Sowing the Seeds**

_"It's the end of the world as we know it..."_

- "End of the World," REM

The thud of his horse's hooves sounded startlingly loud in the stillness of the forest, the even, trotting beat pulsing in sharp relief against the gentler sounds of brush and branches catching at his clothes. By now the noises were familiar, but in this case familiarity bred irritation rather than comfort.

Just two weeks ago, he had been seated comfortably in his house, listening to his mother stir the stew over the fire, savoring the warm mesh of scents wafting from the pot, and idly wondering if the roof would need much repair before winter's chill arrival. Right now, however, he found it hard to believe he had ever enjoyed such beatific domesticity and effortless comfort. He had ridden doggedly this past half-month, staining his feet and clothes brown with grime and dust, his back and thighs in a constant ache from days spent entirely on horseback, and had been nearly waylaid by men hungrier than he more times than he could count. Horses seemed to drop out from under him, turned lanky and worn by hard travel. He himself was not much better off. The force of days spent roughing it had worn his usually monolithic patience and calm into a persistent frantic exasperation that had him twitching at shadows.

If this one lead he had managed to find proved to be nothing but hearsay or blatant lies, he might as well just keep riding straight ahead until the sea swallowed him up for all the good it would do him or his lady.

Lady Usei. It was the thought of her that had kept him on this wild goose chase over the past week, and the thought of what awaited her if he didn't manage to turn up something. Losing one's ancestral lands might not seem like much to an uneducated yokel who'd never had any to begin with, but he knew what happened to women, particularly noblewomen, who didn't have any family or money to support them. After having watched Lady Usei grow from a stuttering toddler who had played with him at hiding from the boringly polite world of the adults and with whom he had stolen the cook's pastries, to a solemn young lady with a shy smile and a gentle sense of humor, he could not consign her to that. The only dowry she could offer a prospective suitor was her land itself, and that, though lush, was not large, and offered no military advantage whatsoever. Even this pitiful incentive might have netted some poor princeling, had it not been for the taint that hovered over her family name. Shiroyama was dogged with enough rumors of supernatural trickery to make even the skeptical cautious. Unless a male heir to the territory could be found, the lords of the neighboring regions, never adverse to an easy conquest, would fall upon the land, having the ready excuse of its lordlessness.

So here was Shunsoku, the Lady Shiroyama Usei's personal courier and childhood playmate, 18 years old and already sporting twinges in his joints. His back ached, and he suffered a hacking cough worthy of any half-starved, pneumatic village grandfather, having hunted all over the provinces for the (possibly mythical) cousin of his lady. Lady Usei's grandmother had had an elder sister who had apparently been married off to someone, and though the family records mentioned a child, nothing had been seen or heard of the two since. The cousin would have been 66 years old by now, and Shunsoku, being of a naturally pessimistic bent of mind, was convinced that he had either succumbed to old age or had never existed to begin with. As the weeks went on, and the road got longer and longer and his time shorter and shorter, he found himself more and more inclined toward the latter theory. The name recorded in the family records for the cousin was the only thing he had to go on, and it really sounded more like an elaborate joke or the delirious musings of a drunken novice monk than a real name. After all, who would be so stupid as to give a child a name as ill-omened as Inuyasha?

Nevertheless, with that name the only thing he had to go on, all he could do when the message from the neighboring lords came was to take his leave of Shiroyama and set about scouring the countryside as best he could for any trace of Cousin Inuyasha's hide, hoping against hope to find the old man in the flesh, or even a competent imposter who wouldn't charge too much for his services. At this rate, neither was likely. People usually just looked at him with a quirk in their eyebrows when he asked if they had an old man named Inuyasha in their village, wondering if a name like that could possibly taken seriously. A few expressed sympathy in the tones one uses to console an individual of uncertain mental stability, and a few laughed, but none had said anything that had given him any hope until the last village he had stopped at.

Every village had its little old lady who served as a repository for the community's collective memory. They were inevitably cantankerous, querulous, cajoling, and cooing by turns, and seemed to know everything related to town history past and present, from the year the bridge had washed out to which of the local teenagers were sneaking off into the woods together. Over the course of his search, Shunsoku had wised up to the facts of life, and now had gotten into the habit of making a beeline for whichever harridan presided over town society when he entered a new village, having determined that if anyone knew anything about Cousin Inuyasha, it would be her.

The last village's old lady hadn't been much different from any of the others he'd visited. Maybe a little more wrinkly, and with a pleasantly rasping voice, like the scrape of tree limbs brushing together, but in other respects congruent with the standard model. When he'd asked her about an old man named Inuyasha, however, she'd stuck her staff firmly in the ground, squinted up at him, and rubbed her chin thoughtfully.

"Inuyasha? Funny name. Way back before you were born, sonny, they used to have an Inuyasha in the next village over. Come to think of it, there was some funny business between him and a miko back around the year lighting struck the granary, wasn't there? Hmph. Thought he'd died, but I guess not if you're looking for him. Good luck, dearie. And if you find him, tell me what happened with him and the miko. Always thought men who fooled around with priestesses were a funny lot."

After so much fruitless searching, wasted breath, and worthless interviews, Shunsoku's reaction to this torrent of information had been to stare fixedly down at the old lady with eyes the size of ripe plums, mouth wide enough agape for a spider to build a respectably spacious web between his eyeteeth. The old lady had harrumphed, informed him in a stern mothering tone that if he stayed there, his face would freeze like that, and marched back over to her seat in the village square. After that, his jaws abruptly clicked together and he spun on his heel and very nearly ran back to where his patient horse waited, tied ignominiously to a fence post. He mounted so quickly that he could never afterwards remember whether he had, in fact, leapt into the saddle as he seemed to recall doing, and eagerly turned the mare's head back into the tangled green sprawled across the road, riding heedlessly through the mire of brambles for the next village over.

But after the initial jubilation at finding anything - anything at all - relating to Lady Usei's long-lost cousin had worn off and he'd had time to think over what the old lady had actually said, his doubts had come rushing back.

The old lady had thought Inuyasha was dead.

It sounded, from the miko bit, as if his lady's cousin had considered himself pretty hot stuff in his youth. Maybe he had been enough of a young idiot to toss himself off a cliff on a dare, or get smitten by a lightning bolt for being too much of an ass or something.

The old coot had better still be around, or there would have been no point at all to this search, and no hope at all for Lady Usei.

And thinking such dark thoughts as these, Shunsoku rode doggedly through the whispering forest as the sky became golden with late afternoon.

------------

By the time he arrived at the next village over, the shadows had begun to tangle across the path. The air glowed orange, soft and warm as the blush of an apricot, and hung heavy and relaxed, speckled with the chatter and calls of villagers coming back from the fields. As Shunsoku had expected, the resident wise old lady sat in state at one end of the village, a cluster of awed children around her, waiting to be sent hither and thither on the her imperiously commanded errands. As he came closer, he could see that this particular old lady wore an eye-patch that, along with her determined manner, reminded him distinctly of the captain of the guard back home.

As he approached, the children scattered, leaving him alone to face the old lady staring pointedly up at him with her one eye.

"Can I help you, young man?"

Shunsoku took a deep breath and said, as respectfully as he could,

"As a matter of fact, you can. Do you have in your village a man named Inuyasha?"

At this, the old lady abruptly straightened up, and gave Shunsoku a sharp-eyed inspection that might have left a less desperate man quivering in his boots.

"Now what do you want with Inuyasha?"

Shunsoku's heart gave a grand leap and set about doing cartwheels in his thorax. The old man was in this village! Moreover, he was still alive! At long last, he could go home with a solution to Lady Usei's troubles, and soon enough life would resume its peaceful, pleasant course.

…As soon as he got the old lady to tell him where Inuyasha was, of course.

So Shunsoku set about the task of explaining who he was and why he'd come, and as he did so, the old lady's previously grim expression became more and more open, and, had Shunsoku not been quite so engrossed in extracting the necessary information, he would have been a bit wary of the dryly humorous glint of her one eye. At the end of it, she gave a rumbling chuckle and sat back down.

"So Inuyasha's inherited a state, has he? Go on into the woods that way and you'll find him eventually."

Shunsoku, elated, jogged over to the woods in question and disappeared into them with alacrity. Kaede shook her head and chuckled once more at the thought of Inuyasha in a lord's court. Oh, the poor earnest young man had a surprise coming to him, he did. Inuyasha too.

--------------

As Shunsoku strode deeper and deeper into the woods, thorns catching at him with their dangerous caress, and leaves folding themselves demurely against his clothing, elation gave way to nagging worry as no sign of a house, a hut, or even a path showed any inclination of appearing. Eventually, upon reaching a clearing of sorts, really nothing more than a token absence of reaching green, he slumped down to rest against the smooth gray trunk of a convenient tree. Perhaps the old lady back at the village had been playing a trick on him. Or maybe he'd just gotten lost. Maybe the old man had wandered off somewhere without telling anyone. It had been known to happen with old folks. Or perhaps….

_ Thunk!_

"Ow!"

"Oi! You! Get your own tree! This one's mine!"

Shunsoku quit rubbing the indentation left in his skull by the nut the stranger had thrown at him and scowled upwards, expecting to find an obnoxious bumpkin to admonish and subsequently pump for information on the elusive Inuyasha. The scolding he had had in mind died abruptly in his throat when he caught a glimpse of his attacker staring down at him with a markedly offended scowl of his own and realized that "bumpkin" was a far-from-appropriate appellation.

Shunsoku couldn't believe the twists and turns his luck was taking today. First he had finally heard news on Lady Usei's hitherto-believed mythical cousin. Then, marvel of marvels, he had actually managed to find the village he supposedly inhabited. And now there was a youkai pelting him with acorns because he'd happened to sit down at the wrong tree.

"You deaf or something?"

"It's just a tree. You don't own it. I've got just as much right to sit here as you do."

The words were out of his mouth before he really had time to think about them, an automatic response conditioned by years of childhood spent squabbling over whose ball it _really_ was. It was only after the fateful phrase had been uttered that it occurred to him that it might not have been the wisest thing to say. From aloft, a brief rustling was heard, and a muttered, "If you want something done, you've got to do it yourself." The youkai abruptly and soundlessly landed in front of Shunsoku, causing him to start violently.

"I was here first, so it's my tree. Get your own."

Seeing the youkai up close only solidified Shunsoku's growing conviction that he had just done something irredeemably stupid. Those claws looked all too sharp for his liking.

"Well? Are you going to move or not? 'Cause I'd be more than happy to help you."

At that moment, the heavens at last intervened on Shunsoku's behalf. The youkai's ears suddenly performed a full about-face, and Shunsoku heard a mumbled "Aw, fuck." Within a few seconds, he was enlightened as to the exact cause of the youkai's dismay as the bushes on the other side of the clearing rustled and a human girl clad in the most indecent outfit Shunsoku had ever witnessed emerged from the forest.

She took one look at the situation, stomped her foot in exasperation, and called out: "Inuyasha! What are you doing? Can't I leave you alone for a few minutes without you getting into trouble?"

This earned her a sulky "He started it" from the youkai named….

…Oh no.

It couldn't be.

Named _Inuyasha_?

"Leave him alone, Inuyasha."

Inuyasha snorted, and so as not to be completely thwarted, reached out his foot and nudged Shunsoku into a mud puddle cradled among the tree's roots.

"Inuyasha!"

"Keh. Moron."

And with that, he disappeared back into branches in an off-handed leap. The girl let out a frustrated snort and turned to Shunsoku with an air of long-suffering patience.

"I'm sorry. Sad to say, he's usually like this. What set him off this time?"

From Inuyasha's tree came another scornful snort.

"The idiot thought it would be a good idea to sit under _my_ tree."

"It's not your very own tree!"

"It's my very own forest, isn't it?"

At this point, Shunsoku was wondering dazedly if he had gone mad. The youkai was Inuyasha…in which case he wasn't really a youkai, was he? Not that a hanyou lord was any improvement. And this was his forest. And, apparently, that was His Tree. And right now he was watching a girl in a ridiculously short skirt have a heated argument with his probable lord, sitting up in said tree, a bit of stark white hair dangling down, snarling insults. What was going on?

All the while he had been questioning his sanity, the argument between Inuyasha and the girl had been escalating, until finally the latter rolled her eyes and put her hands on her hips.

"Inuyasha, SIT!"

And Shunsoku watched dumbfounded as Inuyasha, howling curses all the way, plummeted down from the tree as if yanked to the ground by a string. A resounding thud echoed throughout the clearing, and Shunsoku winced reflexively.

Inuyasha picked himself painfully up off the ground, ground out one final "Keh," and spun on his heel to stalk off into the forest, thorns twining about his legs and finding no purchase on the cloth of his hakama.

----------------

Kagome watched him go, filled with the old familiar anger at his stubbornness and insults. Best to give him a while to cool down and then go and scold him. It was beyond the bounds of even what one could reasonably expect from Inuyasha in the way of civility to bully someone simply for leaning against a tree trunk. No matter in whose forest the tree in question happened to grow.

In the meantime, she had better attend to the poor man who had watched the entire scene take place. She turned to face him, and noticed the stupefied stare plastered all over his face. Arr, Inuyasha. Always had to make a scene.

"I'm sorry about that. I'm Kagome."

He snapped out of it, shook his head, and belatedly stood up, making an attempt to wring the muddy water out of his clothes.

"Um, Shunsoku, personal courier to Lady Shiroyama Usei. Thank you. I think you saved my life," he said with a somewhat shaky laugh. Kagome dismissed his thanks with a flustered hand wave.

"You'd have been ok. Inuyasha's really not as bad as he seems. Really."

"Ah…excuse me if this sounds rude or intrusive, but is Inuyasha really his name?" he asked, suddenly hesitant.

Kagome gave him a funny look, wondering if perhaps Inuyasha had clouted him over the head before she got there. Considering Inuyasha's obviously demonic features, she would not have thought he would find such a functional, honestly descriptive sobriquet odd…although to be truthful, the first time she herself had heard it, it had struck her as more of an appellation than a real name. Still, it was a peculiar question to ask.

"I've never heard him use any other. Why do you ask?"

At this, Shunsoku groaned and reached up with one hand to massage his forehead in the universal gesture of impending headache, the motion rendered somewhat comical by his size and formidable muscularity.

"I've been looking for someone named Inuyasha for the past two weeks…"

"Why?"

Kagome took a step back, instantly suspicious, and suddenly feeling a little nervous. It struck her that Shunsoku was a very large man whom she did not know in the slightest, and she had just sent Inuyasha, overprotective badass extraordinaire, off in a huff. Perhaps just as well for him. People who were looking for Inuyasha usually wanted to kill him. But it still left her in a potentially dangerous situation that she would have little hope of getting out of, should things get ugly. She didn't have her bow and quiver on her at the moment. Kagome backed warily away from Shunsoku, trying to put some distance between them without seeming overtly rude.

As she did so, Shunsoku began to haltingly explain himself, sounding as if he had to work hard not to bite his tongue on every word, and Kagome, while keeping a safe distance between them, listened a bit more sympathetically than she might have a moment ago. He sounded like Souta trying to explain one of his more drastic mishaps to her mother.

"I…That is, I've come from the Shiroyama lands. Lady Usei cannot secure an alliance by marriage, and if a male heir is not found, Shiroyama will be annexed by one of the other states. We looked through the family records, and we found a mention of a cousin to Lady Usei, long since disappeared, named Inuyasha."

Kagome's mouth opened and closed briefly as the information sank in. Oh. That made sense, in a completely unanticipated way. She had never expected trouble to come from Inuyasha's mother's family. In fact, she had thought that Sesshoumaru was the only family he had left. But…did Shunsoku have any idea what he was getting into? Inuyasha in court? Presiding over a harvest festival? Playing at intrigue? She could just hear him responding to polite diplomacy now. _"Fuck off, asshole. I don't need no stinkin' alliance."_

"Ah, Shunsoku…you don't really know Inuyasha…are you really sure it's a good idea to make him your lord? I mean…you just saw him right now, and, well, that's the way he is pretty much all the time."

Shunsoku groaned. "He's always rude and dangerous?"

Kagome bit her lip in consideration, trying to give him an honest answer that would make him see that Inuyasha was not a good candidate for nobility without making him sound too much the bad guy.

"Rude, yes. He's always rude. Dangerous…he can be. Usually not unless there's a good reason, but he can be. He wasn't seriously threatening you back there, he just wanted you off his tree." Here Kagome paused a few seconds to gather her thoughts before continuing. "Shunsoku, please reconsider. Inuyasha has his own quest at the moment. If, by some miracle, you managed to drag him away from it, he would not make a good lord. Even if you performed a double miracle and convinced the people there to accept a hanyou lord, the likelihood that he would not get your state into trouble is very, very small."

Shunsoku's expression, already glum, had turned almost desperate by the time she finished her speech. He was quiet for a few seconds after its conclusion before seeming to pick up determination once again. "Kagome…you seem to know him well. Could you please talk to him? I…If we do not find a lord, Lady Usei will have nowhere to go and no one to care for her. I would look after her as long as I could, but I don't have much, and in the end there are only so many possible employments for a disinherited noblewoman, none of them pleasant. I've been in her service since we were both small children, and I would not wish that to happen to her. _Please_ try and talk to him."

Kagome felt suddenly very much ashamed. It was sometimes easy for her to forget that the freedom Sango and herself enjoyed was only granted them in this time and place because of their special circumstances, and that those same circumstances made them both outcasts in many eyes. Kagome herself did not have to deal much with it. She could always hop back through the well into a world where a woman could hold a job and speak her mind, but she had seen the looks and whispers Sango generated on the rare occasions people saw her in her battle gear, fighting with a vicious accuracy that her calm face concealed well. The thought that a woman, probably near her own age, fallen on hard times might have no recourse at all turned her stomach and made her feel guilty for the warm, comfortable life she led intermittently on the other side of the well.

"I…I'll see what I can do. I can't promise anything, but I will talk to him. If you go back that way to the village and wait with Kaede-baachan, I'll be back in a little while."

Shunsoku nodded and bid her a polite farewell. Kagome watched his shoulders slump as he walked off, clearly indicating that he thought the battle already lost. With a sigh, she straightened her back and marched off to search for Inuyasha. Think what Shunsoku might think, Shikon shards or no Shikon shards, she would see to it that Inuyasha shouldered his responsibilities, at least for long enough to arrange something for Shunsoku's lady.

---------------

Inuyasha ground his heel on the arched back of a fallen branch, enjoying the satisfying crunch it made as the twigs touching the ground snapped under his weight. Dammit. There hadn't been any call for that. Well, all right, maybe there had been. Maybe booting the man into a mud puddle had been a little extreme, and maybe he'd put his foot in his mouth one time (ok, a few times) too many during that argument – But he wasn't backing down on the "my tree/your tree" business. It was perfectly reasonable that he be allowed a personal tree in a forest named after him.

And he _hated_ being sat in front of other people.

With a leap he was back up in the branches, leaning irritably against a tree trunk as he turned an ear to cup the mumbled tones of Kagome's conversation with the interloper. Not that he thought there'd be trouble or anything. Just in case. Can never be too careful. Soon enough, the sound of voices ceased and was replaced by the sound of footsteps. That would be Kagome, coming to extract an explanation from him. He could tell from the distinctive skidding noise her shoes made against the dry leaves covering the ground.

Inuyasha carefully rearranged himself into a position of brooding nonchalance and settled down to wait. After the sit, he was not in the mood to be cooperative.

-----------------

"Inuyasha! Come down from there!"

"What for, wench?"

"I want to talk to you!"

"So do it from there. Don't feel like moving."

"You don't want me to say it again, do you?"

Kagome watched impatiently as Inuyasha shot her a dirty look and got up slowly, only to squeak and leap reflexively backwards when he jumped down to land only a few inches in front of her. His expression didn't budge from its habitual scowl, but the slightly smug glint to his eyes told her that the near-miss hadn't been an accident.

"So?"

She bristled and bit back a sarcastic retort as she thought how to best to broach the subject. "I was talking to the man you were so busy intimidating…"

"It's his own fault he wouldn't move."

Kagome cleared her throat and shot him a glare. "As I said, I was talking to him. It turns out that he was looking for you."

"He was _what_?!"

Inuyasha's claws tensed at his sides and his ears flattened all the way back. Kagome hurried on, grabbing the billowing sleeve of his haori to prevent him from going off and beating the shit out of Shunsoku before she could get to the important parts.

"Don't jump to conclusions! It's not what you're probably thinking!"

"Oh? And then what is it?" he inquired, sarcastically innocent.

Kagome gulped. Now came the tricky part. She had no idea how he was going to take this. Inuyasha's family was a touchy subject, and she had learned to avoid it whenever possible, finding that no matter how delicate or well-meaning the inquiry, all it earned you in the end for your trouble was a brooding dog-demon.

"His lady will be thrown out of her home and her lands lost if a male heir to the property is not found. They looked through the family records, and the last remaining male heir is you. You're apparently the only candidate for lord."

The reaction was immediate. Inuyasha's position moved not one millimeter, but his eyes snapped wide open, as if he had just been slapped, and Kagome could almost hear the barrier slam down behind his irises.

"No," he said flatly, voice dangerously even, and turned and crouched to leap back into his tree. Again her hand entangled itself in his sleeve in a silent plea for him to halt his progress.

"Please, Inuyasha. The lady is your cousin."

"I've never met her in my life. I have no responsibility to her."

Kagome's patience stretched thin and snapped like a bowstring, wire-thin loose ends whipping through her consciousness, stirring up anger and indignation at his callousness in their wake. He was being unreasonable, and this was too important for her to let him just walk away from it, even if she had to fight dirty to make him listen.

"Inuyasha, if you don't go, she will have nowhere to go and no one to turn to. Who knows what will happen to her? She's probably not much older than I am! And you're too stubborn and self-centered to set aside your pride and do what any humane, mature person would do if a relative were in that kind of trouble! I somehow thought maybe you were just grown up enough to do the right thing, but I guess I was wrong."

Inuyasha was silent for a moment, gone absolutely still. Finally, a mumbled sound of frustration escaped him and he suddenly whirled, ripping his sleeve out of Kagome's hand and bent down to her level to glare at her bitterly before barking out a reply.

"All right, dammit! I'll take up the responsibility. Go back and tell the idiot-troop we're leaving first thing tomorrow morning."

And with a snap of thick cloth, he was back up in the branches, barely giving hands and feet time to scrape rough bark before ricocheting off into another tree at a speed that rendered him near invisible. Kagome stood still at the base of his adopted tree, fists slowly unclenching and a victorious smile spreading across her face. Eager to tell the news to the others, she too turned and jogged back through the forest.

****

* * *

**AN:** Innumerable thanks to KellyChan, Merith, and Chri for giving this chapter a good, thorough critiquing. Had it not been for their help, I have a feeling that I would later look back on this posting as one of the more cringe-worthy episodes in my online existence.

And thank you also to those of you who read this. If you enjoyed it, I'm pleased and gratified. If not and you're still reading this, well, I'm grateful that you were at least willing to read it through to the end.


	2. Moving Out

**Chapter Two: Moving Out**

****

Miroku beamed at the gaggle of women across the road. His seat on the bench afforded him a very nice eye-level view of their…assets. He hadn't sat there for that express reason, but who was he to complain if fortune decided to throw him some table scraps? The village women had long since wised up to his tactics, Sango having warned them at length that his genteel manners were not to be trusted. Ogling was the best he was going to get.

Speaking of ogling, there was Sango now, coming around the corner.

To his intense disappointment, she spotted him from across the road and marched over with the look of a woman on a mission, thereby depriving him of an opportunity to watch her sway as she walked. Stopping not at all coincidentally in a position that both kept her out of arm's reach and blocked his view of the local women, she put her hands on her hips, but nonetheless spoke with utmost politeness, the silent threat of Hiraikotsu looming over her shoulder.

"Houshi-sama, have you seen Shippou? Kaede-sama has been looking all over for him."

"No, I haven't. Isn't he out with Kagome-sama?"

"No, she went out looking for Inuyasha and he didn't want to go with her."

"No surprise there, with him in this kind of mood."

Sango warily eyed the bench and sighed before gingerly sitting down on it next to him. She was careful to position herself as far away from his wandering hand as possible.

"I hope Kagome-chan manages to grow some patience in him someday."

The last week had been preternaturally bare of any and all Shikon no Tama rumors. This, of course, made Inuyasha irritable, argumentative, and obnoxious - even more so than usual.

Miroku's head bobbed in rueful agreement.

"For all our sakes, she had better. It's unnerving to have him in this state. When he's snarling and whacking everyone within a twenty-foot radius, I can't help but get the feeling that something nasty is sneaking up on us and, with his senses, he's the only one who has a clue."

Sango sighed and dropped her head, suddenly pensive, cool shadow sliding over her cheekbones. Miroku felt the liquid shade of the roof eaves pour over his own face as he leaned back, his mind suddenly heavy with thoughts of the Shikon no Tama and their search for its fragments. Nowadays, the feeling that something nasty was sneaking up on them was a common one. Trust came harder and harder, and even small and ordinary things seemed ominous.

But despite the constant peril of the quest and the frequently irascible, occasionally improbable nature of the relations among the members of their small coterie, Miroku found himself unwillingly thankful for the shattered jewel and the trouble it brought. Life was mostly uncomfortable, often painful, and always stressful. Since joining Kagome and Inuyasha on their search, he had seen some truly horrible sights. By now, he had memorized the smell and color of blood, and even knew its texture in his nightmares, slick and warm and deceptively silky.

But for all that, it kept him distracted.

He still remembered the nights when after conning the local gentry out of a room he would lie silently watching the ceiling. He would gently finger the rosary that crossed his hand, counting the smooth sandalwood beads and listening to the quiet whisper of wood beneath his fingertips, his mind filled with the leaden thought that under the warm cloth and gently clacking beads lay ravenous emptiness, not flesh and blood as there ought to be. Sometimes he would dream of nothing but the booming roar of the wind in the darkness and wake panting, clutching his chest with one hand. He always kept the other rosary-circled one as far away from himself as he could, unable to look away from it as he tried over and over again to swallow the knot lodged in his throat.

Now in his ill-gotten lodgings, in good times he argued with Inuyasha and stole the occasional chance to feel up Sango, and in bad he aided whoever else was healthy at the moment in bandaging cuts and splinting bones. When he had nightmares, they were usually brutally violent. But, well, he was used to brutality and violence, and it was far, far better than dreaming of being swallowed up into nothing. He only rarely had those kinds of dreams now.

Sango viewed the quest in a somewhat different light. It was her personal mission of vengeance, a bloody duty whose weight burdened her mind at odd moments. In the early days, there had been times when she could hardly bear to eat, remembering the easy normality of her family's meals. How her mother would always make a habitual disparagement of her cooking, only to be met with her father's enthusiastic disagreement and Kohaku's silent but hearty nods, his mouth already full. Sango herself had always laughed and joined in with her father.

It was hard to remember that now without also remembering her father's shredded body and the time she had come home to find her village soaked in darkness that had been far too liquid to be shadow, people she had never thought would need protection lying neatly under row upon row upon row of gently rounded earthen mounds. And Kohaku… always so gentle, his face had kept that calmness even as he lunged toward her bearing a weapon she had helped teach him to use.

After the Shikon no Tama's corrupt influence had clouded her life, there were precious few easy memories left to her.

They both sat there in silence for a while, thoughts similarly adrift. The dusty halo of the day's last light seemed impotent from where they sat, a frail and watery force incapable of breaking the shadows dripping from under the eaves.

At long last, Miroku shook himself from his pensive state and turned to Sango, hoping to return their thoughts to safer, more ordinary matters. Her expression caught at him, her eyes grim under half-closed lids, the bitter twist to her lips tenderly highlighted in the soft light of the setting sun. She looked frozen, terribly tranquil, and Miroku was stricken with the sudden premonitory fear that if they could not complete the Shikon no Tama, that expression might affix itself to her face permanently.

"Sango."

Softly said, but nevertheless she started before facing him again, features falling into the easy neutrality of ordinary life.

"Should we go look for Shippou?"

Sango nodded and they got up, their shadows lengthening behind them as they walked slowly toward the forest.

---------------

At that very moment, Shippo scampered through the undergrowth of Inuyasha's forest in search of Kagome. He played a game as he went, popping in and out of bushes in a zigzag path, narrow paws finding their way among leaves and twigs with no trouble at all. He had slipped away from Kaede a quarter of an hour ago and immediately sped off to find Kagome. She had been gone for an hour already, and Shippo was feeling bored. Very bored. At times like these, the best thing to do was talk to Kagome. Her down-to-earth kindness was reassuring, and she would listen to what he had to say, and talk to him in return. Hah! At least she knew who was the smart one in their group.

He knew she'd gone off to find Inuyasha, and that most likely meant that she'd be angry and frustrated when she came back, so she'd probably want to see him, too. Sometimes when that happened she'd take him and they'd go sit together somewhere and she would tell him stories about her time or play a game with him. Eventually, they'd usually nap for a while together before making their way back to wherever the rest of the group was staying at the time. Shippo loved spending time alone with Kagome like that, without the others around to mess things up, but it made him vaguely unhappy that almost the only time it happened was when Kagome was upset. Sure, the rest of the time she played with him and gave the occasional surreptitiously smuggled future snack, but those special times when he had her all to himself only came when she had a fight with Inuyasha.

In a way, Shippo was grateful to Inuyasha for making Kagome spend time with him like that, but at the same time it angered and confused him that the hanyou hurt Kagome so often.

He didn't understand Inuyasha at all. Just how dumb was he to keep doing that? Especially when he got sat for it?

…Speaking of the jerk, here he came.

Inuyasha landed on the tree-branch directly over Shippou's head in flash of red clothing. He was scowling harder than usual, and his posture was tenser than his wont. Plus, he had been running through the forest at top speed for no apparent reason. It did not take a genius to deduce what must have occurred.

"What are you doing here, twerp? Get out before I punt you out."

Shippou frantically responded to this command with the impertinent and fearful sense of outraged justice that only small children possess.

"I'm looking for Kagome, you idiot! Where is she? What did you do to her?!"

"Keh. Ask her yourself. Now get lost."

And with that Inuyasha was gone, launched into another tree at top speed.

"Jerk!"

With no response forthcoming from the vanished hanyou, Shippou turned and trotted back toward the village as fast as his legs would carry him. It took something serious to upset Inuyasha enough that he would be charging around the forest like that. Usually he just sat and brooded and made everyone else miserable. And if Inuyasha was worked up, then it meant Kagome must be in tears.

Again.

Inuyasha really was a jerk.

----------------

The said jerk continued his hell-bent race through his forest, needing to feel the stinging twinge of fatigued muscles and the harsh slap of the wind against his limbs. Usually when shit like this came up, he would go find a tree to stay in and think about it, but this was different. Now he had to somehow divert energy from churning, disjointed internal monologue presently stuffing his skull. His mind was alive with sharp thoughts, jumping and shoving inside it so forcefully that it felt as if it might explode at any minute. He didn't know which ones he should heed. All were equally confused, and in the darkness of his mind, equally disturbing.

Kagome had just twisted his arm into playing lord for some backward human state. Apparently, by her standards, he _owed_ these people he'd never met. Because they were his family.

Just what the hell was he supposed to think about that?

This lady he was supposed to help was…what, his cousin? A relative of his mother.

…He hoped she didn't look like his mother. He didn't want to have to deal with that.

Dammit. What the hell was a ruler supposed to do, anyway?

A new burst of speed put him out over a small stream in a leap. His feet touched the limb of another tree on the other side, and he launched himself off again, swiftly disappearing into the branches as the dusk deepened to velvety blackness, enfolding Inuyasha's Forest in a soft embrace.

--------------

Shunsoku wandered dejectedly back through the forest, mournfully appraising the irony of his situation. He really should have had some inkling at that name. Inuyasha. So terribly unimaginative and utterly truthful. He could not imagine a more unsuitable candidate for lordship.

Not that it mattered. He was fairly sure that Inuyasha would prove just as unenthusiastic at the prospect as he himself was, and no matter what the girl might say, he didn't see Inuyasha as anything but the stubborn type after that brief encounter.

What on earth was he going to do now?

The village came into view through a ragged gap in the forest and Shunsoku trudged on toward it. The thought of retreat briefly crossed his mind; he might easily continue through the village, get on his horse and be gone long before the girl got back to tell him that his cause was completely lost. He could go back home to Shiroyama and tell Lady Usei that Inuyasha didn't exist or had died long ago. That thought was swiftly crushed with a mental snort of disgust. He owed it to Lady Usei to stay and wait on the official verdict before returning and reporting his failure.

The girl… Kagome, was it?… had mentioned that he should stay with someone named Kaede while he waited. He should probably find someone to direct him to her.

To his dismay, the only people in sight were obviously a couple in the midst of some rather private business. Shunsoku could tell it was private because the man's hand was at the moment somewhere behind the girl, much lower than her shoulders or even her back. _Do they really have to do that in public?_ With a sigh, he continued on his way toward the village. He could search for Kaede on his own, if need be. He hadn't gotten far, however, when his course was interrupted by the sound of a mighty slap.

…Apparently, they weren't a couple, after all.

His dilemma solved for him, Shunsoku hastened forward to inquire about Kaede before the man was no longer among the living to answer his questions.

"Ahem."

At his noisy throat-clearing, both looked up. The man picked himself up off the ground, allowing Shunsoku to see that he was a monk. The woman shot him a very prim look and smoothed the front of her yukata casually before speaking.

"Excuse the disturbance. Do you need any help?"

"Yes. I need to see Kaede. Could you tell me where she is?"

The monk opened his mouth to speak, but before he could make a sound, the girl jumped in.

"Actually, we'll be seeing Kaede-sama shortly. We're looking for a lost child at the moment. After we find him, we're going back to her house. If you help us look, we could show you where it is on the way back."

"That's all right. I'll find her myself. Kagome – do you know her? – told me to wait for her there, and I don't think she'll take long, so…"

The monk finally spoke up.

"Wait, wait. Kagome-sama sent you?"

Again the girl interjected.

"How do you know Kagome-chan?"

This reaction rather startled Shunsoku. He was puzzled at the sudden worry and tension in their voices, and the protective anger in the girl's query. He had expected perhaps a bit of good-natured joking about mutual acquaintances and it being a small world should they happen to know her. This threw him for a loop, and he began to somewhat nervously explain himself and his circumstances.

-------------------

Sango listened to the stranger's tale with growing trepidation. While the news that Inuyasha was the lord of someplace or other was certainly less calamitous than she had feared, it was not good news either. From Shunsoku's description, it sounded as if Kagome had become stubborn and would argue in circles with Inuyasha until he faced up to the responsibility and went to Shiroyama.

She could only imagine the effect this would have on Inuyasha's already volatile sulk. A quarrel with Kagome was not going to help matters at all. Though Inuyasha would most likely acquiesce in the end, he would probably not do it gracefully. If he resented it as much as she thought he would, the whole thing could turn into a very big mess.

This was, of course, assuming that the whole setup wasn't a trap.

In the course of telling her how Inuyasha had acquired the Tetsusaiga, Kagome had mentioned how Sesshoumaru had played on Inuyasha's lack of family to his advantage, and how powerful a card it had proven. If it had worked once, an enemy might well try the trick again.

As Shunsoku's tale wound to a close, she shot a glance at Miroku to confirm that the same thoughts had occurred to him. The monk was an incurable lecher, but when he wasn't thinking about _girls, girls, girls_, he had a sharp mind. Miroku returned her look and picked up the conversation.

"Thank you for telling us. I am Miroku, and this is Sango. We are Kagome-sama and Inuyasha's traveling companions. If Sango agrees, we can take you to Kaede-sama now."

With this, he turned to Sango, who gave an almost imperceptible nod as she replied. It would undoubtedly be best to keep Shunsoku under observation until they were sure of the situation.

"That would be fine, Houshi-sama. It's almost dinner time anyway, so Shippou will be back soon in any case."

--------------

Kaede turned out to be the old lady who had pointed him to Inuyasha. Shunsoku discreetly sulked a bit, suspecting that she had played one of those sneaky tricks on him that the elderly seemed to periodically enjoy playing upon the young. His funk went unnoticed, however, and he was soon employed along with Sango and Miroku in chopping vegetables to make the stew. Most of the vegetables, he noted, were wild, and there was no millet to be made into cakes with it. The fare of a village that survived only barely at the level of subsistence. Though the stew contained meat, he uneasily suspected that this was courtesy of Inuyasha, who had not looked at all the type to subsist entirely on tubers.

Sometime in the midst of scraping the dirt off a particularly recalcitrant root, he received his second scare of the day when a small, furry, orange _thing_ streaked into the hut, wailing at an eardrum-perforating pitch about Kagome and Inuyasha. The other occupants of the hut quickly moved to calm the new arrival, and Shunsoku saw that the furball was in reality a child. - a kitsune. Apparently, this was the child Sango and Miroku had been looking for. After the shock of Inuyasha's appearance, however, he found himself too jaded to be astonished. Besides, this youkai seemed much less threatening than Inuyasha, and so he contented himself with bemusedly watching the little kitsune absently stroke his tail as the others related Shunsoku's story to him. The little one had quite a mouth on him, though nothing compared to Inuyasha's. His violent astonishment at the idea of Inuyasha being lord of anything kept Shunsoku's mind momentarily off the fact that Inuyasha likely wouldn't consent to being lord of anything, anyway.

When the stew had started to bubble, Kagome herself entered the hut, looking rather tired but otherwise in good spirits. Upon seeing Sango, Miroku, and Shippou there, she started to explain the situation to them, but they quickly stopped her, already having heard the tale.

"Well, I talked to Inuyasha and he agreed. We leave early tomorrow."

There was a momentary lull. Shunsoku gaped and tried his hardest to determine whether this counted as good news or bad. Shippou soon broke the silence with a sly comment.

"Ooooh. You sat him a lot, didn't you, Kagome? No wonder he's so pissed."

"You saw him, Shippou-chan?" Kagome sighed and a slight scowl pulled at her brows. Shunsoku thought wryly that she seemed very much inured to arguing with Inuyasha. "Is he very upset?"

Shippou recounted his brief conversation with Inuyasha, and Kagome gave a mental wince. That did not bode for a pleasant journey on the morrow. Or the day after. Or the day after that, for that matter. Inuyasha had an inordinately long sulk-time.

Inuyasha and his moods were summarily and unceremoniously ejected from the conversation when Kaede pronounced the stew done. They enjoyed a pleasant meal, if speedy, meal, and soon settled in for the night. If an upset Inuyasha wanted an early start to their latest journey, it was generally best to attempt to oblige him.

For a while after the others had ceased to turn uneasily, Kagome lay awake, cradling Shippou to her stomach as her gaze idly traced the rough grain of the wooden wall she faced. Now that the excitement had worn down and she had time to think, she was starting to worry a bit. Inuyasha was undoubtedly in a mood, and well, she could see why. Not to say that she wasn't right or anything. Just…well, his family (or lack thereof) was always a touchy subject. She couldn't imagine what it must be like to grow up alone, and even worse, to grow up alone not because there was no one there to take care of you, but because no one wanted to take care of you. Inuyasha had looked surprised when she'd told him. Did he even know he had relatives besides Sesshoumaru?

Thinking about it, she decided that he probably didn't. He'd been sealed for fifty years, after all. Any human relatives he might have known would probably have died in that time.

Now she was starting to feel a bit guilty. This really looked like a mess in the making. Surely no one at Shiroyama would be pleased at the prospect of being ruled by a youkai, even a half-breed one. And, well, it was kind of Inuyasha's personal mess. It _was_ his family. And she'd sort of pushed him into it.

…But it wasn't fair that a girl be cast out of her home like that when they could do something about it. And really, there was no help for it now. She had put her foot down, and even if she retracted her command, Inuyasha was far too stubborn to back down just because she said he didn't have to do it. For better or worse, they were committed. And it was the right thing to do.

Still…

Kagome closed her eyes and did her best to sleep. Dawn would come soon enough, and things would be clearer in the light of morning.

---------------

Inuyasha started the next day off right – that is to say, with a kick to Shunsoku's stomach. Though it was really more of a gentle nudge than a true kick, the hoarse squawk and scrabbling leap it resulted in were quite satisfying. The noise woke the others up, and he snarlingly told them to hurry up and get ready before stomping outside to wait.

Thankfully, it did not take them long to assemble at the road, and they were soon off. After that promising start, however, the trip quickly went downhill. They were slow, plain and simple. They dawdled along the path, chatting happily back and forth, as if this were just another routine shard-hunt. They wanted to stop for lunch. They wanted to stop to rest. What the hell was wrong with them? Didn't they get how big a deal this was? Didn't they realize this wasn't going to be a frikkin' walk in the woods?

Inuyasha himself stalked along the road far ahead of them, scowling to himself and calling out the occasional derisory remark on their speed over his shoulder. He eventually succeeded in goading them into having Kirara transform and carry Sango, Miroku, Shippou, and Shunsoku (whose horse had taken a violent dislike to Inuyasha and had been left in Kaede's care) for short periods of time. In this way, they were able to cover a great deal of ground without tiring Kirara overly. Inuyasha wound up carrying Kagome on his back for these interludes. At first, she tried to talk to him, but his answers were as brusque and monosyllabic as he could make them, and eventually she lapsed into a silence almost as sullen as his own. When they camped, he hung around only long enough to snatch and devour his dinner before disappearing up his tree for the night. No one bothered him, which was just fine by him.

Against his better judgment, Inuyasha found himself curious about Shiroyama. He knew as little of human customs as he did of youkai ones, and the task of ruling a whole state full of humans was a daunting one, but also in some ways an attractive one.

He remembered his mother sometimes trying to teach him something or other of human society. Specks and shreds of culture littered his mind, uncounted and unordered. He knew fairy tales and nursery rhymes and how to read. She had taught him a little about how to write before she had died. He remembered the curiously wistful, almost guilty expression her face had held as she had shown him how to hold the brush, telling him to mind his claws and not accidentally dip them in the ink. Looking back on it now, he couldn't help but wonder if perhaps she had wanted to teach him human things to make him seem a little more like an ordinary child.

He felt instantly ashamed of the thought and hastily exiled it from his mind. His mother had been the only one to care for him for the first part of his life, and he could not betray her memory in that fashion. He wondered what she would think of the situation he now found himself in and ruefully concluded that she would probably side with Kagome.

How on earth was he going to do this? A bunch of humans weren't going to shut up and do what he said, just because he was distantly related to their ruler. Somehow, he would have to make them, though, if he were really going to go through with this whole stupid business. And at this point, he was definitely going through with it. It wasn't even that the humans were the only problem. Any youkai there should happen to be within Shiroyama wouldn't take kindly to a hanyou in charge.

Inuyasha spent most of the trip grumbling irritably to himself as he thought circles around the problem, and in the end succeeded only in realizing just how many problems there were with this situation, and just how screwed he was.

With the aid of youkai speed, the journey that had taken Shunsoku two weeks was completed in three days. By the eve of the third day, they were camped in the lee of a hill from whose top they could faintly see the outer walls of Shiroyama's keep, huddling nearly invisible against the pale stone of the mountain itself.

* * *

**AN:** Many, many thanks to KellyChan, Merith, and Chri for beta-reading this and saving me from myself. It's much appreciated!

Additional thanks to those of you who read this – I hope you enjoy it.


	3. First Impressions

**Chapter Three: First Impressions**

The day dawned clear and crisp, promising an easy half-day's walk to Shiroyama's gates. It had Shunsoku rather worried. The sheer awkwardness of Inuyasha's inhumanity had not struck him until he had realized that he would have to convince whoever had gate duty to let them in, youkai and all. During one of Inuyasha's brief absences from the camp, he brought the problem to Kagome's attention, hoping she might convince Inuyasha, as the most menacing member of their group, to disguise himself, at least enough to pass for an odd-looking human. Just covering his ears and keeping his hands in his sleeves would do it. Anything to keep from causing an immediate uproar.

Kagome was dubious, but agreed. She could see his point – the gatekeepers might very well spook at Inuyasha's appearance, and she didn't want to start off their stay in Shiroyama with a skirmish. It was, however, unlikely that Inuyasha would appreciate the suggestion. In her own era she would have had relatively little trouble persuading him, but here, in a time he knew better than she, she was sure that he would balk at the idea.

That instinct proved entirely correct. When Inuyasha got back from his patrol, she gingerly broached the topic, and received pretty much the response she had anticipated.

"No, I will _not _wear a hat."

"But, Inuyasha…"

"Didn't you hear me the first time?"

"Would you quit being so difficult? You're acting like a child. In fact, you've been acting that way this whole trip! Would you just get over it already? If you don't wear it, can you imagine how the guards are going to react?"

"I don't care. I'm not going to wear it."

Inuyasha rearranged his arms across his chest and renewed his glare. Kagome rolled her eyes in response and put her hands on her hips.

"For heaven's sake, it's not as if it would be any trouble for you! All you have to do is wear the stupid hat so we don't get into a fight our first day there! It wouldn't hurt you to just wear it!"

"Keh!"

"All right, so your ears would be a little squashed for a few minutes. Big deal. Is it too much to make that tiny sacrifice so that we can avoid some unnecessary trouble?"

"It's not that, wench!"

"Then what is it? From here it looks like you're just too pig-headed to wear it!" Kagome waited a moment, and when it was clear that no answer was forthcoming, stomped her foot and added sarcastically: "I'm sure the reputation of a demon of such stature and renown as yourself won't be permanently damaged by the mere addition of a hat."

"I told you, it's not that!"

"Then what _is_ it?"

Inuyasha huffed irritably and turned his head to the side.

"The guards are soldiers, right?"

"What does that have to do with the hat?"

"So they're going to be under my command. If I'm going to be ordering them around, it's not going to make a good impression if I have to sneak past them like a wimp."

Kagome blinked at the sudden change in tactics. Since when was Inuyasha concerned about the kind of impression he made on anyone? But she had to admit he had a point. If he were somehow going hold his own as lord of a human land, he would have to gain the respect of its soldiers. And he was right that hiding from them would not be the way to do it.

"Oh. "

"Keh."

And that was the end of that. Inuyasha stuck his nose up in the air and leapt back into the trees, and Kagome headed off to inform Shunsoku of the decision. He was initially dismayed, but soon perked up. At least Inuyasha wasn't going to ignore his duties as Shiroyama's lord. Shippou, who had bounded up beside Kagome during the last part of the conversation, was more skeptical.

"What? Dog-boy said that? You're joking, right?"

"No, Shippou-chan. He really did say it."

"That can't be right!" A little thought soon solved the conundrum to Shippou's satisfaction. "He really said something stupid like usual, and you're just covering for him, aren't you?"

"For the last time, no! He's not stupid, you know."

Shippou was unconvinced, but Kagome was hopeful. Inuyasha had evidently been thinking a lot about this. If he kept it up, Shiroyama might not prove such an ordeal after all.

--------------

As expected, they reached the gates of Shiroyama a little after midday. Shunsoku went ahead to prepare the gate-guards for their presence, leaving the rest of them huddled uncomfortably at the side of the road to watch the negotiations from a distance. Negotiations or not, their appearance still caused a considerable disturbance. As they came forward in response to Shunsoku's wave, the guards' posture settled perceptibly, knees bending minutely to distribute their weight evenly. One even let his hand rest loosely on his sword, and all watched them with hard eyes as they approached. Soon, they stood face-to-face with the guards, all arrayed in a row before the entrance. A tense moment passed in which the gatekeepers only stared, still as stone, before one stiffly pronounced a welcome and motioned the others to open the doors. Inuyasha cursed and muttered to himself under his breath at their scrutiny, but remained surprisingly quiet throughout the encounter.

Eventually, they were allowed to pass. Shunsoku lead them through the village curled around Shiroyama's walls, Inuyasha close behind him. He was silent for the duration of their walk to the next set of gates, but his claws curled loosely at his sides and he made a point of matching the confused and alarmed glares of the townsfolk they passed with a flatly defiant stare of his own.

His tense posture was not lost on the rest of the group, and Sango and Miroku shared a glance over Shippou's head. Miroku flicked his gaze over to Inuyasha before nodding, indicating that he would have a talk with the hanyou later. Sango nodded back. She would have a talk herself with Kagome at the first opportunity to see if she knew any better how he was dealing with it.

The guards at the gates of the keep proper proved even more troublesome – it was one thing to allow youkai into Shiroyama, but letting them into the lord's residence itself was going too far. It took a good quarter-hour of persuasion before they passed the entrance. Once inside, Shunsoku disappeared briefly, reappearing with a small, neat man whose movements held the finicky precision of clockwork. He greeted them with a bow that somehow came off as faintly snide and introduced himself as Shiroyama's steward. In a thin, fastidious voice, he informed them that if they wished to bathe, they might do so, and rest their feet a while before the Lady saw them. Miroku was left with the distinct impression that they didn't really have a choice about bathing, and should they protest, they would be politely manhandled into the bathhouse and tied down until they met the steward's exacting standards of cleanliness. A small flock of servantscourteously but hurriedly ushered them away, Shunsoku staying behind to make his report first to Lady Usei, so that she would not be entirely unprepared for Inuyasha.

----------------

As it turned out, Shiroyama did not have a real bathhouse. Instead, a hot spring welled up in the courtyard, and roofs and screens had been erected over two of the many small divots notched in its bank to trap the steam rising from the water. Though an obvious effort had been made to keep the huts clean and neat, they were undeniably shabby, the wood worn and warped by the weather and the screens rickety with age. It seemed that Shiroyama had fallen on hard times.

Sango and Kagome promptly commandeered one of the shacks, Shippou close at their heels, leaving Miroku and Inuyasha to the other. They entered the water in a thick, uncomfortable silence, even Inuyasha's grumblings against the supercilious steward muted. Miroku studied him thoughtfully out of the corner of his eye as he picked at the snarls in his hair, deciding on an opening tactic. It did not take long before Inuyasha noticed the inspection.

"What are you looking at?"

"Nothing."

Inuyasha sent him a mistrustful, suspicious look, but contented himself with only a snort before returning his attention to the tangled mess of hair wound around his fingers. After a momentary pause, Miroku gave a mental shrug and plunged into his inquiry without preamble.

"So. What do you think of this place so far?"

A scowl pulled at Inuyasha's features and an ear flicked backwards in annoyance, but he continued to single-mindedly yank at the knots in his hair. "How should I know? We haven't yet been here an hour."

Miroku, determinedly oblivious to Inuyasha's unforthcoming mood, continued his investigation without so much as a blink. "Well, I like it. Definitely not rich, but not dirt poor either. And you have the admit that the mountain is beautiful."

"Why would I care about the mountain?" muttered Inuyasha, mostly to himself, but Miroku heard it nonetheless, and seized gleefully on the opening.

"Well, it is your mountain, after all. Or rather your cousin's mountain."

"Keh."

"I wonder what your cousin looks like…"

Now _that_ got a reaction. Inuyasha sent him a positively evil look before snapping out his reply.

"If you hit on her, they'll never find your remains, bouzu."

"So protective of her already?"

"Don't jump to any conclusions. I just don't want _you_ as a relative."

Miroku did not bother to look affronted, as Inuyasha, after a brief pause to glare venomously at him, had seemingly returned his attention to detangling his hair. Instead, his face turned serious as he continued to test the proverbial waters.

"No need to be so testy about it. In this situation, that's probably a good attitude to take…"

"I don't _have_ an attitude!"

"…and I don't blame you for taking it. There's a lot to worry about here."

Inuyasha by now no longer made any pretense of distraction and had donned the peeved expression that generally presaged a sound whack over the head for the source of his irritation.

"Like hell there is. Stop talking shit."

"Don't be ridiculous, Inuyasha. The fact that the surrounding lords no longer have an excuse to annex Shiroyama does not mean that they will cease to make the attempt. And you know as well as I do that we can't stay here forever. We will need to find a way to ensure your cousin's lands and her security in the long term."

Instead of delivering the expected stuttered, blustering retort, Inuyasha just scowled harder and muttered, "Yeah, tell me something I don't know," before heading for the far side of the hut and turning his back, effectively ending the conversation.

Miroku frowned. That neat, abrupt, and ultimately rather calm departure hadn't been what he was expecting. The situation was evidently bothering Inuyasha even more than they had guessed. His close-mouthedness now along with his sullen withdrawal on the road seemed clear indications that he was intent on maintaining arm's distance from them while he dealt with it. Though his attitude would be frustrating under any circumstances, here it could be genuinely dangerous. Inuyasha now had a small state dependent on him, and Miroku was willing to bet that he hadn't a clue on what he was supposed to do with it. He would need their help.

For now, Miroku held his peace. Further questioning would only put Inuyasha in a temper – which was the last thing they needed before going to meet Lady Usei.

-----------------

On the other side of the hut, Inuyasha destroyed yet another knot with a sharp jerk, barely noticing the painful tug on his scalp.

_Stupid, stupid, stupid…. Dammit. _

He hadn't meant to be that abrupt about it, but Miroku was being nosy, and right now he didn't want to deal with it. Now Miroku knew how much the situation was bugging him and wasn't going to leave him alone about it. He'd probably tell the others, too, and then they'd be on his back as well. He'd already made the decision to take up the responsibility, and he would stick by it. Shiroyama was his problem and his alone.

It was a different responsibility from that of defeating Naraku. That was a burden shared by all of them. They'd all borne the effects of Naraku's malevolence, and were united against him. Shiroyama, however, had no connection to the others. It, like his obligation to Kikyo, was a personal responsibility. As such, he and only he should take care of it.

The others wouldn't see it that way, though. Kagome in particular would be hard to fend off once Miroku related that conversation to her. Goddammit, he'd really screwed up there. He'd been hoping that if he didn't call attention to it they would just let it go. But then Miroku had to open his big mouth and give him the opportunity to fuck it up. Now he had no chance of hiding the fact that Shiroyama was weighing on his mind.

He could, however, hide the extent to which it did so, and perhaps frustrate their efforts that way. He might not be able to avoid them asking nosy questions, but he could keep them from learning anything from his answers, and, if the rebuffs were rude enough, perhaps eventually discourage them from asking any more.

Inuyasha climbed out of the spring and began the tedious task of wringing the water out of his hair. Though he might be able to discourage questioning, the best route would be to avoid it entirely. If he could manage to keep away from them long enough, they might give up or forget about it. To that end, he said nothing when Miroku also exited the water, and the walk to the door where the servants hovered anxiously was passed in leaden silence.

Sango and Kagome soon joined them, and the servants, much relieved at seeing them all together and marginally presentable, informed them that Lady Usei would see them now and began to lead the way through the house's winding corridors. Unnoticed by the others, Sango and Miroku shared a glance over Kagome's head and exchanged grimaces at the uncommunicative mood of their companions.

----------------

Kagome watched unhappily as servants scurried out to their way to stare and whisper as they passed. She was worried about the coming meeting. Thankfully, Shunsoku had told Lady Usei about them, so Inuyasha and Shippou wouldn't startle her, but aside from that, there was no telling how it might go. Most people who didn't know Inuyasha found him intimidating, to say the least. And now, he was most likely terribly nervous, so he would probably be even more snappish than usual.

Assuming the meeting went as she suspected it might, what should she do? She would usually try to cover for Inuyasha's antisocial attitude and do the talking for him when he seemed about to put his foot in his mouth, or at least sit him when he was unbearably rude. But this situation was different - it was his family, and she didn't want to meddle. Lady Usei was his cousin and he should be the one to establish the relationship between them.

But what kind of consequences would that have in this case? How damaging an effect might Inuyasha's usual slew of social missteps have? How would it affect their position here? Had Inuyasha thought any of this out, or was he going to rush off half-cocked as usual?

He had, at the least, thought about how he should deal with the guards at the gate. That was something. He might have also thought about how he should deal with his cousin. In fact, it seemed fairly obvious that Inuyasha had done nothing but think about Shiroyama during their trip. That was no guarantee, however, that in the heat of the moment his mouth wouldn't override his brain, as it all-too-often seemed to do.

Though she worried, in the end Kagome determined to do her best not to interfere with any conversation between Inuyasha and Lady Usei. It was his business, when all was said and done.

Well… she wouldn't interfere unless things got _really_ ugly.

----------------

Shiroyama was not a large residence, and it was not long before they arrived at what was presumably Lady Usei's audience chamber. The servant leading them conferred quickly with the guard stationed at the door, and was soon sent in to announce their presence. It took no more than a few seconds before the door again slid open and they were ushered into the room.

The first thing that struck Inuyasha was that Lady Usei was very young, possibly even a little younger than Kagome. And she was scrawny, too, in the way some girls of that age are scrawny, all long stork-bones and brittle joints. A wisp of hair dangled over her right eye in spite of obviously gargantuan efforts to keep her tresses combed into a neatly ordered hairstyle. She looked overwhelmed by the sea of colorful kimono surrounding her, and her eyes were tentative and determined. She gave a tiny, near inaudible gasp at the sight of him, but made no other sound or movement until they had seated themselves in a neat row in front of her.

"Thank you all for coming. I am Shiroyama Usei." Her expression tightened nervously for a second before she continued. "And you must be Inuyasha. It's a pleasure to meet you, cousin."

_She sure doesn't look like she's enjoying it._ Inuyasha barely restrained himself from shifting nervously and putting his ears down as he frantically searched for something to say.

"Yeah. I'm Inuyasha."

A few seconds of awkward silence passed before became apparent that Inuyasha had nothing more to say on the subject and Usei turned to the others.

"And you are his traveling companions? What are your names?"

The rest of the introductions went much more smoothly. Inuyasha's ears lay half back in frustration as he watched the easy interaction between his cousin and the rest of his group. When it was Shippou's turn to introduce himself, he was, predictably, obnoxiously chattersome, and Usei, like every other female around, seemed to think it was cute. She even, for fuck's sake, _squealed _and asked if he could play with her. At this, Inuyasha felt his jaw tighten in annoyance and had to sharply stifle a loud growl that made everyone in the room turn to look at him. He caught the sudden flood of fear in Usei's scent as she heard it, and the way her heart rate abruptly ratcheted up almost to rabbit speed.

Dammit, she was afraid of him. He'd been lectured by Kagome on his responsibilities to her, hauled himself all the way out here when they could have been doing something constructive, and was going to take on what he guessed was going to be a whole shitload of trouble for her sake, and what was her reaction? She was _afraid_ of him.

How unfair was that? Even the brat got better treatment than he did, and Shippou was full youkai.

The fact that Usei really did look as he remembered his mother didn't help at all.

She was fucking _afraid_ of him.

Inuyasha was silent for the rest of the brief meeting. He listened to the conversation with only one ear and a mere fraction of his attention. At one point he thought he caught something about an assembly, but dismissed it as something he would find out more about tomorrow if it were really important. He was unspeakably relieved when Usei announced that she had been keeping them too long when they were undoubtedly tired from the journey and wished to rest. He led the others out of the room and wasted no time in cornering one of the servants still hovering outside the door.

"You. Where's my room?"

What he really wanted to do was find a tree to sit up in and think, but he guessed a room was the best he was going to get right now.

"S-Straight down this hall sir, the third door on the right."

Inuyasha stalked off in the indicated direction, leaving the rest of the group gazing curiously after him at the door to Usei's audience chamber. It took only a few seconds before the sound of a door being thrown open met their ears, followed by the thunderous sound of it being slammed shut again. Sometime during the commotion, Lady Usei had joined them at the door, drawn by the unaccustomed violence of the noise. They became aware of her presence only when she put a hand over her mouth and said, very quietly, "Oh, no."

* * *

**AN:** I know – long wait, short chapter. Hopefully, the next one will progress faster now that I'm on vacation. No guarantees, but chances are pretty good.

Many, many thanks to KellyChan and Chri for beta-reading. This story would be far more clumsy without them.

Thanks also to everybody reading this – I hope you enjoy it. Happy holidays!


	4. Impasse

**Chapter Four: Impasse**

****

Inuyasha stood still, listening through the reverberations of the door's closing for sounds of pursuit. On hearing none, he stalked to the room's farthest corner and slid down to sit with his back to the wall, bringing Tetsusaiga up into its familiar place against his shoulder out of habit. He grasped the hilt loosely, his fingers resting on tattered wrappings burnished smooth by use. Slowly his grip tightened, pressing the minute contours of the sword's binding still flatter.

Shit.

What the hell was wrong with him? All of Kagome's yammering about family must have really gotten under his skin - things wouldn't be any different this time just because the girl was his cousin.

Afraid of him. Dammit.

Why did she have to look so much like his mother?

That same heavy hair and determined eyes that his yellowed memories of her held. It had hurt much more than he had expected to get that reaction from someone who looked so much like the first person he had lost.

Screw it. It didn't matter. She would avoid him, he would avoid her, he would get out of Shiroyama as soon as possible, and they would all be happy. For now, he was here, he would do his job, and she would just have to live with it.

Inuyasha passed the short remainder of the afternoon in a fever of seething thought, sometimes slumped against the wall, but more often pacing back and forth along the chamber's length. Long after the room had darkened and the sounds of the keep had quieted, he managed to fall into a fitful doze, frustrated at the useless outcome to his thoughts.

----------------

As was his custom, Inuyasha woke early. Momentarily startled at the unfamiliar surroundings and the absence of his companions, he tensed and shifted his grip on Tetsusaiga before he remembered where he was.

Shiroyama.

He stood and secured Tetsusaiga at his hip before heading for the door. The keep lay still around him, bare of any of the sounds he associated with daily routine. It would be a while before Shiroyama started to wake up, and he had no intention of staying cooped up in that room any longer.

As he had guessed, the hallway outside was dark and quiet. The only signs of life were a torch flickering wanly in a wall-sconce, down to its last dregs of fuel, and the even, steady breaths of a sleeper drifting from the room to his right. Choosing a direction at random, Inuyasha set off to begin his exploration of the keep.

Though the Shiroyama was of a fair size, the floor plan was simple. He stuck to the lower level – the tenshu was most likely guarded. Many of the rooms he passed held snoring occupants, and on a few occasions he barely escaped the notice of a fellow insomniac. When this happened, he usually wound up ducking into the nearest unused room until the other person had passed, not wanting to deal with the awkward scene that would likely erupt should they meet. He was lucky – there was no shortage of empty rooms in Shiroyama. The ones he saw were obviously used for storage, piled high with boxes, but their contents were covered in a patina of dust. He wondered how long they had been that way. Was it like this when his mother lived here? Or had the place since gone into decline?

Probably the latter. Over fifty years had passed since she had lived here. He still found it hard to believe that he had been sealed so long.

The keep was beginning to wake up now. He could hear people stirring down the halls and smell the fire being lit in the kitchens. The sun would probably rise soon. He didn't want to go back to his room, but he didn't want to meet anybody in the halls, either. Maybe he could get outside and wait out the morning there.

Inuyasha carefully scented the air. He had been too absorbed in thought to pay much attention to it earlier, just registering the most obvious odors automatically. To his right lay the kitchens – the fire he had already noted and the lingering smell of the previous night's meal. To the left, he could make out, amongst other smells, a faint draft of fresh air. He turned and headed that way.

He had to duck a few somnolent servants on his way, groggily going about their morning chores, but soon found a door that led to a garden at the keep's back. It was a very small garden, and the meticulously pruned trees were painfully artificial, but it was outside and out of the way, so it was good enough for him.

He made his way to the largest tree in the place and leapt to one of its sturdy lower branches. From that vantage, he could see over the keep's wall and into the valley it sat above. The air was already starting to take the chill of the autumn that would come in earnest in another month or so, but had not yet become unpleasantly cold. Inuyasha shrugged at his thoughts – even if it were cold, it wouldn't matter to him. He'd been outside in far worse. With that, he settled back against the tree's trunk to watch the sun rise over the mountains on the horizon.

----------------

The soft murmurs of chatter woke Sango the next morning. Shippou's high, bright voice leapt and jumped around the calmer, warmer tones of Kagome's speech in a manner that put Sango in mind of a flock of sparrows mobbing a crow. A gently wry smile tugged briefly at the corners of her mouth at the familiarity of the scene; Shippou never seemed to have a day when he didn't feel energetic. Her eyes cracked open to the sight of a strange room, spare and neat in the dim morning light.

It took her a moment to remember where they were. After Inuyasha's bad-tempered exit of the previous night, the rest of them had been left to try and reassure Lady Usei that his pique was only the result of nerves, and not of anything personal. Sango felt her mouth tighten into a hard line. She did not think they had succeeded. When they left, the Lady had still been pale as paper. Her hand clenched to a fist underneath the blanket. What had Inuyasha been thinking to growl at her like that…?

No one had gone after him. Kagome had looked as though she wanted to, but had instead set herself to the task of appeasing Lady Usei's worries. After that, they had been whisked away by the steward so quickly they hardly realized it. He had taken them on a lengthy tour of Shiroyama and introduced them to a number of people, none of whose names she could now remember. It had been too much too fast. They had passed Inuyasha's door once in the course of the tour, but it had been closely shut and, to all appearances, deserted. After his display of temper, Sango doubted that Lady Usei would have wanted to disturb him.

With a mental sigh, Sango shook herself free of that line of thought and sat up – there would be plenty of time later to worry over it.

"Good morning, Sango-chan."

"Good morning, Kagome-chan, Shippou-chan."

"Kagome! Now that she's awake can we go get breakfast?"

Kagome sent Sango a rather hangdog look before replying; evidently, Shippou had been up for quite some time. "I'm sorry, Sango-chan. Would you mind if we got dressed quickly and headed for the kitchens? Shippou-chan was too excited to eat much last night."

Sango shook her head, the wry smile making a brief reappearance. "That's fine. We can eat breakfast and then find Inuyasha and Houshi-sama." Her face regained its serious mien at Inuyasha's name. "I think we need to talk to them. Inuyasha was acting strangely yesterday."

Kagome's hand momentarily stilled in its course, halted midway to her pack. "Yes. He was." The hand resumed its journey with more vigor, and Kagome scowled. "He'd better not keep up that attitude of his the whole time we're here. I mean, I can understand why he'd be a bit moody, but…"

A sharp rap at the door interrupted her tirade, and all three occupants of the room exchanged a glance. Who would be knocking on their door? It seemed a sure bet that Inuyasha would be avoiding them for a while, and no matter how good his cover story might be, Sango doubted that Miroku would find a servant willing to lead him to their room before they were up and decent. Finally, Kagome cleared her throat nervously and called out.

"Who is it?"

A somewhat timid alto answered her, muffled by the door. "Sachiko and Hatsue, my lady. Lady Usei sent us."

"Come in."

The door slid open and two girls near Sango's age bowed and entered, one of them carrying a bundle of punctiliously folded cloth in her arms. They hovered unsurely before them a moment, darting curious glances at each in turn before one offered up a watery smile and spoke.

"Lady Usei thought that Lady Kagome might like some more suitable clothes."

And with that, her companion kneeled and began to unfold the package, revealing kimono similar in style to the ones Lady Usei had worn the day before and the ones Sachiko and Hatsue themselves wore.

The first one to react was Shippou, who scampered out from his place at Kagome's side to inspect the cloth's pattern. It was only when the girl unfolding the kimono squeaked and started back that Sango realized that Kagome's enormous pack had hidden him from sight before.

"Oh! I…I'm sorry! I didn't think there was anyone else in the room."

"No, I'm sorry. I didn't realize you couldn't see him. Shippou-chan, you should apologize for scaring her like that."

"But I didn't do anything!"

"I know you didn't mean to frighten her, but it would be rude not to say you're sorry."

"No, it's fine, Lady Kagome," interjected the girl, "He just startled me a bit." Though she spoke calmly, she kept her hand clasped to her chest a few moments longer before hesitantly reaching to continue unfolding the kimono. The handmaidens kept their eyes downcast after that, and Sango could see out of the corner of her eye that Kagome was discreetly biting her lip. The only one unaffected by the uncomfortable atmosphere seemed to be Shippou, who had gone back to his inspection without further ado.

"Wow… Kagome, are you really going to wear this?"

"I…" Kagome tugged self-consciously at the pink flannel sleeve of her pajamas and threw a glance to her pack, where her school uniform lay folded, before returning her gaze to the kimono. "Do you have anything less elaborate?"

Sachiko and Hatsue exchanged a look.

"My lady…"

"Please? I really wouldn't feel comfortable wearing something so elegant…"

The handmaidens seemed to resign themselves, and the one kneeling on the floor began the careful process of refolding the kimono.

"Yes, Lady Kagome. We'll bring you something plainer."

As they exited the room, Sango felt her shoulders loosen, releasing a tension she hadn't realized they held. She was happy that Kagome had not accepted the kimono. Of course she couldn't wear her usual clothes here, where so much might depend on the impression they made, but she was glad that Kagome was not going to turn into a grand lady on her. Between Lady Usei's formality and the deferential handmaidens, she already felt out-of-place.

Sachiko and Hatsue soon returned, this time with a plain yukata. They were adamant in staying to help them dress, though Sango felt it was more out of a thwarted sense of obligation than anything else. The simplicity of their clothing rendered assistance completely unnecessary. She hadn't had anyone help her dress since she was a very young child. It was a strange, uncomfortable experience - she felt tiny and doll-like, not like a real person at all. Finally, they left, and Kagome passed her a weary smile as the door closed behind them.

"Well, that's over. Let's go find the kitchens."

-------------------

It took them a while to reach their destination. Kagome supposed that they could have asked a servant to show them the way, but after the handmaidens' fussy ministrations that morning, she found herself reluctant to do so. Sango and Shippou made no objection, so they simply wandered the keep's corridors until Shippou's nose hit on the scent of food. Even at that early hour, the kitchen bustled, a squad of servants tending to the fire and food, and more coming and going. In all the commotion, they passed almost unnoticed and managed to snag a portion of leftovers without attracting undue attention.

As luck would have it, they met Miroku on their way out, also on his way to breakfast.

"Good morning Kagome-sama, Sango, Shippou."

"Good morning Miroku-sama."

"Did you just come from the kitchens? If you'll wait a moment I'll join you."

"That's fine. Have you seen Inuyasha, by the way?"

"No, I haven't seen him this morning. He's probably still in a bad mood."

Shippou sniffed. "Of course."

True to his word, Miroku returned shortly and they searched the keep for a place to eat their meal in peace. They finally settled on an out-of-the-way corner of the courtyard where they could watch the people passing by and not be bothered or get in the way. An old maple tree towered over them, its twisted boughs shading the ground – a pleasant place for a meal and a conversation.

Soon enough, all that was left of the food was crumbs and full stomachs, and they settled back to watch the keep's goings on.

"There aren't many people here, are there?" said Shippou.

It was true. Though there was a quiet hum of activity about the house and the stables, the courtyard seemed very empty. The wind kicked up streamers of dust from the bare ground, and a trio of grimy children had the yard's center all to themselves.

"No," replied Sango. "Shiroyama is probably a very small state – I hadn't heard of it before now."

"Nor I," said Miroku, "but at some point it must have been very wealthy. The house must have been a fine one when it was built."

"It's still beautiful," said Kagome. She sighed before continuing. "I hope things go well here."

"They may, at that. The people here don't have much choice in the matter – it's either accept Inuyasha as lord or be conquered," said Sango.

"True. If they needed an excuse to annex Shiroyama before, Inuyasha's presence alone may be enough to deter the neighboring lords from following through on it."

Kagome frowned. "I hope so, Miroku-sama, but it seems strange that they would do that in the first place."

"Yes, it does, Houshi-sama." Sango's fingers tapped slowly in thought. "If they were really interested in Shiroyama, why wouldn't they just attack?"

Miroku shook his head. "I don't know. I agree that it doesn't make much sense, but there isn't anything we can do about it. We'll just have to handle events as they occur."

Kagome scowled, not liking the uncertainties of the situation. Maybe it was just a fluke, or a miscommunication, but it worried her. Miroku was right, though – they had no choice but to take things as they came. Speaking of which…

"Miroku-sama, did you talk to Inuyasha yesterday at all? Do you know what was going on with him and Lady Usei?"

Again Miroku slowly shook his head before replying. "I spoke to him earlier in the day, but I don't know why he left in such a temper or why he started growling like that." Unnoticed, Sango's hands clasped tightly in her lap. Miroku continued, absently cycling the rings of his shakujou through his fingers. "Actually, I was hoping you might know something about it, Kagome-sama."

Kagome scowled harder. "No. He's being stubborn."

It was Sango who put into words what they all secretly feared. "If he acts like that the whole time we're here, his presence will just make things worse."

After a few seconds of tense quiet, Shippou spoke up.

"She was afraid of him. I could smell it."

"Who… Lady Usei?"

"Yeah."

There was a collective wince.

"Oh dear," Kagome sighed. "He won't have taken that well."

"Well, that certainly explains why he left the way he did." Sango frowned. "But why was he growling in the first place?"

Silence held for a moment before Miroku cleared his throat. "I think we need to have a talk with him. I didn't get much out of him yesterday, but I had the impression that he was going to try to handle this by himself."

"He always wants to do that," snorted Shippou.

"Well, this time he can't," said Kagome, arms crossed in determination. "Miroku-sama is right – we need to talk to him."

"I'm glad you agree with me, Kagome-sama. In fact, I think you should be the one to approach him."

_If we all talk to him, he'll just get more stubborn._ Kagome nodded. "All right."

After that proclamation, a peaceful silence arose, shortly broken by a commotion at the courtyard's gates. They all turned to watch as three riders entered. Two looked to be retainers, but the man in the lead was obviously someone of importance. He wore two swords, and though his clothing was not flashy, the cut and the cloth spoke of quality.

"They must be here for the audience this afternoon," said Sango.

"Probably."

"You know," Shippou said thoughtfully, "I don't think Inuyasha was paying much attention when Lady Usei told us about that."

-----------------------

The sounds of clattering footsteps and raucous invective roused Inuyasha from the light sleep he had fallen into.

"What do you mean you can't find him?" complained a nasal, high-strung voice. "How is it possible to miss a man with white hair and _dog ears?_"

A slightly older voice answered it in the tones of one whose patience is being tried to its limits. "We've already checked his room three times. He's not in any of the other rooms, and he's not in the kitchens or the courtyard. The guards say he hasn't left the keep, and his companions haven't seen him."

"Did you check the stables? No? Well, check them. What about the garden? He must be _somewhere!_ I want this place scoured back to front – we need to find him soon, before the rest of the lords arrive for the audience."

A resigned sigh arose in response. "Yes sir."

From his perch, Inuyasha frowned. What audience? Usei had said something about an assembly yesterday, but he hadn't been paying much attention to the conversation at that point. Was this what she had mentioned?

An ear turned behind him at the sound of the garden's door opening and the now-familiar voice of the searcher, grumbling against his superior. Never one to beat around the bush, Inuyasha dropped out of the tree and came around to face his pursuer.

"What audience?"

The servant jumped and stared blankly for a few seconds before recovering his senses enough to stammer out a "my lord."

"What audience?" Inuyasha repeated, impatient at the delay.

"But," the servant queried weakly, "surely Lady Usei told you about it?"

Inuyasha merely shrugged, unwilling to reveal that, though his cousin might have mentioned it, he'd been too distracted to catch it.

"It's meant to introduce you to the local gentry. Usually it's just a formality, but in your case…"

"Yeah." Inuyasha cringed inwardly. He was going to have to worry about local gentry?

"How many of them are there?"

"Three. Lords Mutsu, Tsuruga, and Uetake."

Three. Just three. He could deal with that. Hopefully. He scowled and slowly nodded his head. He _would_ deal with it. He'd taken up the responsibility of Shiroyama, and if he had to, he'd learn to handle it on the fly.

"When does this thing start?"

"Well, Lord Uetake just arrived, my lord. If you'll come with me…"

Inuyasha nodded again, more sharply this time, and followed the servant inside.

------------------

Miroku, Sango, Kagome, and Shippou sat to one side of a spacious room with Lady Usei, waiting for Inuyasha to make his entrance. To their left sat Shiroyama's local lords, patiently facing the dais at the room's back, politely neutral expressions affixed to their faces. One had been sitting there when they arrived, his posture rigid and straight, but the other two had only just arrived. They, in contrast, sat loosely, bored and at their ease. There had been a brief moment of consternation on Lady Usei's side of the room when a servant had entered to whisper that Inuyasha had gone missing and ask if they had seen him. The excitement was short-lived, as another servant soon arrived to tell them he had been found, but it had made nervous wrecks of them all. It was too easy for things to go sour here.

At last, the door at the side of the dais slid emphatically open, and Inuyasha strode in, a pair of servants trailing behind him. At once the two recently arrived lords exploded in angry muttering. Hands were clasped to sword hilts, and one half-rose from his seat. Apparently, they had arrived too late to be informed of Inuyasha's heritage before the audience. The other lord remained still, a slight thinning of his lips the only change in his demeanor. Before confusion could blossom into chaos, one of the attendant servants stepped forward.

"Inuyasha, Lord of Shiroyama."

Hands relaxed back to sides, but the muttering increased in volume. Inuyasha stepped forward, and the assembled lords came to their senses and bowed reluctantly. Though the servants flanked a central spot of the dais, where Inuyasha was clearly expected to sit, he remained standing. Miroku studied his face carefully, looking for some indication of his mental state. He didn't know how he would handle the situation – nothing like it had come up before in their travels. Inuyasha's people skills were lacking even on his most amiable days, and his experience with public speaking was most likely nil. Miroku knew from his own travels that first impressions were often the most lasting – a slip here could cost them badly in the long run. He had confidence that Inuyasha was aware of the situation's perils, but so much of his conversation seemed guided by habit. Reactions ingrained over years would be hard to keep in check.

Inuyasha stood uneasily at the edge of the dais and shifted his weight from one foot to another, the only clue to his probable nervousness. The lords waited cautiously for him to speak, wariness and distrust inscribed in their expressions. He at last let out a dry snort and crossed his arms.

"I'm Inuyasha." He paused, scowling, obviously at a loss as to what more he should say. After a few seconds, he shrugged and continued. "As of now, Shiroyama is my land. Anyone who thinks he can screw with it has to deal with me."

One of the lords who had entered late, a man with an ascetically thin face seated at the room's leftmost edge, spoke up in a piercing voice, needle-sharp.

"I do not recall that Shiroyama was ruled by youkai."

"It is now," Inuyasha snapped.

The lord's expression did not alter as he replied. "I am sorry, my…lord, but you will have to provide more justification than that."

Miroku frowned as Inuyasha's ears pinned back and his jaw tightened. The man was trying to provoke him – that insulting, oily tone made no secret of the fact. They would have to watch him.

Finally, Inuyasha ground out a response. "Shiroyama is mine by hereditary right."

Dead silence met that announcement, and sensing that he had quashed any opposition on those grounds for the time being, he raised an eyebrow and continued.

"Any more questions?"

The room was absolutely still. The lords were clearly disgruntled, but seemed unwilling to take the fight any further at the moment. Inuyasha waited tensely, almost hoping that one of them _would_ ask a question – it would at least be a start to understanding how to deal with them. As it was, he couldn't help but think that he ought to say something more, but nothing occurred to him. The lords stayed silent, and with no reason to continue, he brought the meeting to an end.

"Dismissed."

The lords got up and bowed stiffly before exiting, and Inuyasha headed for the side door by which he had entered.

---------------------

It hadn't gone too badly, reflected Miroku. He had been unquestionably blunt and painfully succinct, but it could have been much, much worse. Now, if only they could talk him around into accepting their help.

"Kagome-sama, I believe now is your chance."

Kagome started, evidently caught up in her own reflections on the audience. "Eh?"

"You can follow him from here so he can't disappear again. It would be best to talk to him as soon as possible. Why delay when the opportunity presents itself?"

Slowly, she nodded. "All right. I'll see if I can get him to see reason."

"Sit him good, Kagome!" called Shippou.

---------------------

Kagome stood at the door to Inuyasha's room, hands planted at her hips. She was annoyed at the tack Inuyasha had taken in their latest venture, and had been for some time. It really grated that he seemed to think he could put them off like this. The sooner she set him straight, the better for all concerned.

"Inuyasha! Open up!"

Silence.

"Come on, I know you're in there!"

She tugged at the door, but it didn't move. The air lay still as a tomb, and she belatedly wondered if he had given her the slip somewhere along the line and she was shouting to an empty room.

"Let me in, or I'll say it!"

When nothing happened, she drew in a deep breath in preparation and yelled it out with all her might. At least this way she would know for sure whether or not he was in there.

"SIT!"

"Fuck!"

_Thun-CRUNCH!_

Now _that_ wasn't a sound you normally heard after a sit.

_Oh god, maybe I've finally broken his back._

"Inuyasha? What was that? Are you all right? Open this door!"

The door came rattling open and she was met with the familiar timbre of Inuyasha's angered shouts.

"Kagome, you stupid… Now look what you did!"

Kagome was too absorbed in horrified contemplation of the hole in the floor to make any retort. Torn planks reared their splintered heads around Inuyasha in a rough circle, and a tatami mat lay haphazardly caught on one projection where it had been dragged into the hole along with him.

"Oh no."

Inuyasha somewhat stiffly picked himself up off the ground and absentmindedly flicked the dirt from the ends of his sleeves. "Well?" he said crossly. "Close the door already - or do you want everyone to see this?"

Momentarily aghast at the unexpected destruction, Kagome cautiously stepped around the hole and closed the door behind her. She remained staring frozenly at the crater while Inuyasha hopped out of it and frowned down at the protruding floorboards. Then her brain kicked into gear.

"Oh no… Look at the size of that thing! Inuyasha, what are we going to do? Why didn't you just open the door?"

"Keh. Don't try and pass the blame off on me, wench. You're the one who said it." Giving the hole a speculative glance, his eyes suddenly widened and a small and rather unctuous grin made its appearance. "You know what this means, right?"

Kagome was still lost in contemplation of the disaster. "Oh, god. Do we even have enough money for repairs? This can't possibly be cheap. What on earth are we going to tell Lady Usei? How…"

"Never mind all that!" he interjected, annoyed that she was missing the important part. "You can't sit me in here."

At those words, Kagome jerked out of her stricken reverie with a start. "No, I suppose I can't," she muttered grimly. She glared and continued. "I'll save them all up for when you're outside." Inuyasha's smile died an instant, painful death and Kagome recalled her original purpose in coming.

"Don't think you're off the hook, mister." The hole in the floor was a catastrophe, all right, but she wasn't going to let Inuyasha use the distraction to weasel his way out of this.

"I came in here for a reason, you know. What's the deal with you lately? What was going on with you and Lady Usei yesterday?"

Inuyasha scowled and crossed his arms. "None of your business."

"Of course it's our business! We're your friends, and we're supposed to help you out!" Between the hole and his obstinacy, Kagome was really steaming. He was impossible.

"I don't _need_ any help!"

"Yes you do! So stop avoiding us and just…"

Inuyasha's eyes darted from the hole to the door and back to her face. Suddenly, he took a step forward, and with a heave, lifted her up and over the hole to set her down just outside the room.

"H-Hey!"

"Look, it's my problem, so I'll deal with it."

The door flew shut, and Kagome pried furiously at it for a few moments, though she realized that he was probably smugly holding it shut until she left.

"This isn't over yet, Inuyasha!"

----------------

Inuyasha heard Kagome stomp off, most likely fuming, and scowled. It looked like it might be more difficult than he had originally thought to keep them out of this. From what Kagome had said, it sounded like they were all in on it now – he would have to find some way to avoid them. No easy task within Shiroyama – the keep wasn't _that_ big, and he was hard to miss.

Miroku's comment about the mountain the day before came back to him and he quirked an eyebrow in thought. If not within Shiroyama, then perhaps he could get outside the keep, at least for a day. He wasn't even sure how big the state was – going on a tour of it would give him time to decide on a course of action, and if he was going to be lord, then he ought to know the land in any case.

Remembering the audience and the snide impudence of the thin lord who had questioned him, he scowled and nodded to himself. It would definitely be worth his time to learn as much about Shiroyama as possible.

* * *

tenshu – Also called a donjon. The central tower of a castle. In later years, they were built up as much for aesthetic and symbolic purposes as they were for defensive ones. In a dated, somewhat ramshackle mountain castle like Shiroyama-jo, however, the tenshu is likely to be a simple turret mounted on the main residence.

**AN:** First and foremost, thanks to Chri for beta-reading. This story is much better for his input.

Secondly, thanks to all of you reading. I hope I've made it worth your time. Starting this chapter, I'm finally going to give in and do individual shout-outs. I'm not going to respond to one-line "Your story sucks/rules!" comments, though. Don't misunderstand me – I'm grateful for them, but, leaving aside for the moment the fact that I'm not talkative to begin with, there really isn't much I can say to that besides "thanks." And, well, I already said that. So, without further ado:

Karris – Thanks for your comments. I try my best to make the characters as tangible as possible, and it's gratifying that you seem to think I'm on the right track.

Calendar – Sorry. Going to have to let you stew a while longer. Dramatic tension is good for the soul. Hey, on the bright side (for me, at least) you're the first reader I've made whimper! I'm honored.

Kristen Sharpe – You're right. What's fun for us isn't fun for the characters. We're all sadists here, aren't we?

Melodylink – Well, I tried to update soon, but this was as good as it got. Almost a month exactly. This is probably as good as it will ever get, actually. Since the chapters for this have a lot of… um… "moving parts," it takes a while to work the kinks out of them.

Kris-chan – I'm glad you're enjoying it. The portrayal of Inuyasha as stupid has always been a pet peeve of mine – I maintain that he'd be long dead if he really were as numb-brained as some seem to think he is. Hopefully, I'll be able to live up to your expectations.

AmunRa – You thought this was a story about the past? Huh. Out of curiosity, was there anything specific that gave you that impression? Ah, well. In any case, I'm glad that you're glad that you're wrong.

Chri – You already know what I had to say, so I'll refrain from rehashing it here beyond saying thanks again.

Once again, thank you for reading. I'll see you again (relatively) soon.


	5. Complications

**Thicker Than Water**

**Chapter Five: Complications**

****

The door to Miroku's room flew open, and Kagome marched in, looking distinctly peeved. It was Sango who made the necessary inquiry this time.

"That was short. How did it go, Kagome-chan?"

"He's being stubborn. He says it's his problem, and we're all supposed to butt out."

"Inuyasha is always stubborn," said Shippou, adding hopefully, "You should just sit him until he listens."

Kagome's eyes turned downwards and her posture shifted from pique to guilty embarrassment.

"I can't. Apparently the floorboards here rather fragile."

Miroku's eyebrows rose. "I take it you just put them to the test?"

"Yes." Kagome scuffed a foot nervously. "Sitting him inside isn't an option."

The full impact of the conversation had finally sunk in, and Shippou gaped in stricken horror as Kagome ruffled his hair in commiseration. No sits? Now what would happen to him?

Sango frowned. "Did you get anything out of him besides 'it's my problem?'"

"No. That's it. He said he didn't need help and to stay out of it, and then he pushed me out the door."

"That's no good. He can't do this by himself."

"Yeah. He'll put his foot in his mouth. _Again_," said Shippou sulkily, resentful of Inuyasha's present impunity.

"There is always that to be considered," said Miroku, "but more importantly, I doubt Inuyasha has any idea of how to run a state."

"And if he's unwilling to accept help from us, he'll be doubly unwilling to listen to any advice anyone else may offer him," chimed in Sango.

Kagome's face acquired a grimly determined look, and she stood up and put her hands on her hips. "Well, he's going to have to accept it. We'll talk to him and explain it as often as we have to, but he's going to have to let us help in the end, because this is too important for his pride to get in the way. Come on, let's go find him. Maybe if we all go together, we can at least get him to stay put long enough to hear us out."

They all trooped over to his room, and upon finding it empty, wandered the keep halls for an hour or so, until they were finally forced to conclude that Inuyasha had managed to effectively abscond from his duties for the moment. He did not appear at the evening meal either, his absence occasioning a brief clamor among the servants. In his place, Lady Usei presided over the feasting lords, skillfully explaining away the empty place at the table in vague, polite terms that made it perfectly clear that any closer inquiry would be an incivility.

A brief resumption of their search after the meal met with no greater success, and finally, disgruntled and irritable, they were forced to call it quits and head off to bed. As Miroku remarked, Inuyasha's absence could occasionally be just as infuriating as his presence.

On the next day, determined to make good on their resolution, they met early and wasted no time on morning pleasantries, heading directly to Inuyasha's quarters without so much as breaking their fast. Sure of at last finding him and delivering the required chastisement, they made their way to Inuyasha's door, only to be met by an apologetic servant who informed them that he had left the keep early that morning.

--------------

After having sequestered himself away in Shiroyama's tiny garden to escape any unwanted disturbance, Inuyasha had reluctantly realized that if he were going to go through with his plan of inspecting the land, he would need a guide. After all, he wasn't even sure how big Shiroyama was or where its borders lay. The only person in the keep outside of his group with whom he was even mildly acquainted was Shunsoku, so accordingly, in the morning he set off to the stables after making an impatient inquiry of yet another of the seemingly ubiquitous servants.

When Inuyasha found him, Shunsoku was groggily filling a trough, a trickle of water running down the curved clay belly of the urn he held to spatter on the floor. A half-wild cat sat by his feet, batting at the falling drops. Shunsoku made a sleepy effort to shoo the animal off, which turned into a start when he noticed Inuyasha. The cat yowled in the sudden downpour as he fumbled the urn, and there was a brief moment of near-catastrophe when, in his attempt to catch it, he nearly tumbled himself into the trough. Inuyasha snorted and raised his eyebrows at the sight, leaving Shunsoku mortified. The embarrassed expression written over his features soon turned to a dubious one on hearing Inuyasha's request, but he nonetheless saddled a horse for himself and they were soon out the gates.

---------------

After exiting the keep, they traveled in silence for a while, broken only when Shunsoku tentatively pointed to a shallow outcropping a little ways up the mountain's slope to suggest that they first make their way there, where they would have a bird's-eye view of about half of Shiroyama. Inuyasha simply grunted and they resumed their quiet course, now off the road and enfolded in the forest.

Gradually, the trail steepened, and soon they were scrambling up a shoddy path through a bank of scree, sparsely forested with scraggly dwarf trees, the glistening dome of the mountain looming high overhead. Once Inuyasha paused to sniff the air and scowl to himself, but he quickly returned to the ascent, and the incident passed without comment.

In short time they made the outcropping. Inuyasha strode immediately to the edge and leaned against one of the boulders littering the ledge, looking out over the valley and listening with one ear as Shunsoku dismounted and followed his lead. Below them lay a shallow, thickly forested basin, the keep settled in amongst the trees. In pearly light of early morning, it looked insubstantial and unreal, dwarfed and overwhelmed by solid darkness and defined shapes of the trees surrounding its walls.

"So? Just how much of this is Shiroyama?"

Shunsoku took a deep breath before replying and stretched his arm out to point out the land's features as he described them. "The northern boundary is the edge of the forest to the north of the keep. Once you go past the keep it swings to the east – there's an old road that no one uses that it's following around the mountain. After you go most of the way around the mountain, there's a small river you have to follow until you get to the ford, and that pretty much puts you back at the northern border."

Inuyasha seemed to be listening intently, and Shunsoku continued, encouraged by this promising attitude.

"Besides the river and the mountain and the keep, there are a few villages and that's about it. There's not really much here."

Inuyasha nodded, privately relieved that he wouldn't have to deal with a large domain.

"Really, we can see everything there is to see today."

"Then let's go."

They got up and headed back down the slope, silent once more, Inuyasha strangely pensive and Shunsoku watching him closely. As they descended into the forest once again, his tense mood gradually lightened until finally, after perhaps a half-hour of travel, Shunsoku made bold to begin an interrogation.

"So what do you think of Shiroyama so far?"

Inuyasha shot him a funny look, and for a moment Shunsoku was sure that he wouldn't bother answering at all, but then he shrugged his shoulders and grunted out, "It's all right."

"Are your quarters to your liking?"

"They're all right."

"Have the servants done as you asked? If any of them are bad-mannered, I can talk with the steward and he can…"

"Would you stop pestering me?!"

"Sorry! Sorry!"

Silence resumed its dominance and they continued on their way. Inuyasha was back to scowling, and Shunsoku quietly fretted over his marked lack of success in questioning him. Finding Inuyasha had been something of a last ditch effort in their battle to keep Shiroyama, and ever since he'd first met him, Shunsoku had been privately wondering whether it might have been better to just give up and scramble along as best they could. Was it really safe to trust Shiroyama and, more importantly, Lady Usei to this… this… _lout?_

"…Lord Inuyasha?"

_"What?"_

"What do you think of Lady Usei?"

Inuyasha growled and stomped ahead of him without replying.

------------------

It took a few miles before Inuyasha's exasperation relented enough to allow him to walk alongside Shunsoku's horse, rather than far out in front. Shunsoku seemed to have given up on questioning him for the moment, and had fallen to brooding moodily, a fact for which Inuyasha was intensely grateful. What the hell was he supposed to reply to something like that anyway? _'What do you think of Shiroyama? What do you think of Lady Usei?'_ He knew a loaded question when he heard it. Anyone in his right mind should have realized that he wasn't going to answer something like that, and that asking was just going to piss him off. Especially since he was trying to concentrate.

As they went, he had been taking note of the scents in the air, trying to determine what creatures might already living in Shiroyama. Plenty of birds and deer, some boar, and a few stray dogs, but he caught wind of no youkai. That, and the strange scent he had caught for a moment from the mountain worried him. It made no sense; Shiroyama should be crawling with youkai. It had many of the advantages of his own forest around Kaede's village – rich hunting, a ready source of water, and human fields to raid, but lacking a human presence large enough to be a danger. The explanation that leapt immediately to mind did nothing to ease his worries – if the youkai avoided Shiroyama, it was because there was something there powerful enough to pose a threat to them.

And that odd whiff of scent he had caught earlier, so elusive he almost thought he had imagined it but so strange he was sure he hadn't, made him wonder if whatever it was was living on his mountain.

In time they reached one of the tiny villages Shiroyama laid claim to. It was mid-morning by now, and most of the villagers were out in the fields lining the dusty road they followed. Someone looking up from his hoeing saw them and gave a shout, pointing. Soon all those in the fields had paused their work to watch their progress down the road, hands shading their eyes in the glare. Inuyasha simply lifted his nose in the air and put on a haughty expression, but Shunsoku waved and called back to them.

They stopped briefly at the village square for Shunsoku to water his horse while Inuyasha glared sourly at a trio of scruffy children watching him from a doorway. While the horse gulped from a bucket and he rubbed its knotted withers, Shunsoku cautiously began an idle-sounding monologue, determined on another method to gauge Inuyasha's character.

"When we were children, sometimes Lady Usei and I would ride out here with one of the older servants."

Inuyasha made a softly indifferent noise, gaze still fixed on the other side of the village square, but did not protest, and Shunsoku continued on, slightly emboldened by the neutral-seeming response.

"In theory, she wasn't supposed to mix with the villagers. That was the reason I was brought long – so she'd have someone to play with besides them. In practice, of course, it didn't turn out that way. There was a lady – used to live right over there – who had two children we used to play with. Sometimes if we stayed long enough, she'd give us millet cakes to eat. That stopped when Lady Usei was about eight. I think her mother thought she was getting a bit too wild," he chuckled.

Inuyasha, though his eyes stayed glued to the house across the way, had cocked an ear towards him, and something about his posture suggested waiting. So Shunsoku kept talking and they exited the village to a steady forth-pouring of the mishaps and highlights of Usei's childhood, all their secret hiding places and childhood forts pointed out as they passed them.

As for Inuyasha, he listened intently to it all, though he tried hard to seem indifferent. Against his will, he found himself almost insatiably hungry for the details of Usei's life. He _wanted_ to know about her. It was a new experience. The members of his group had been thrown into his acquaintance by circumstance – at first he had simply wanted them gone, out of his life. Even Kagome, who had reminded him too painfully of Kikyou, and before her, the miko herself, who had only been another enemy at first. Over time, though, he had learned the details of their lives and personalities, and grown to care for them – so slowly that he had not even realized it for a long time. He had never just met someone and wanted to know about them.

It bothered him. There was no logic to it. No reason at all that he should want to hear about the childhood adventures of a brat who'd lived in a castle all her life and had grown up to be his personal nuisance. Nevertheless, he did not stop listening.

Eventually Shunsoku ran out of stories and they traveled again in silence – though this was a much easier one than the last. They were now following the old road Shunsoku had mentioned, still useable, though the forest had spilled onto its turns and bends, narrowing the path to the point of forcing them into single file, Inuyasha walking ahead and Shunsoku following on his horse. They were at the point at which the road most closely followed the rocky skirt of the mountain, the forest thin and the soil stony, when the wind shifted, and Inuyasha halted dead in his tracks.

Behind him, Shunsoku pulled his mare into a sharp halt and called out, "Lord Inuyasha? Is something wrong?" But Inuyasha remained immobile, his attention entirely focused on the scent blown down from the mountaintop.

The air had caught the faint, sharp scent of ice and frozen stone, though they were far from the snowline. But the strange odor he had smelled earlier was also there, and this time the wind did not tease it away from his nose. It was metallic and earthy. And strong, very strong. Its source was alive, and it was no animal that he had ever known, but its scent did not have the acrid, immediately identifiable bite to it that that of a youkai always possessed.

"Shunsoku. What do you know about the mountain?"

Shunsoku gave him a skeptical look, but answered nonetheless. "The mountain? There are plenty of stories about it…" He made as if to continue speaking, but the forbidding, thoughtful expression Inuyasha bore quickly stopped him.

They completed the trek in silence, turned once again guarded.

----------------------

Sango sat on a porch at one of the keep's side doors, Hiraikotsu slung across her lap, watching the village children run through the courtyard in a violent game of tag, boys and girls equally muddied and scrape-kneed. There would be a number of very dismayed mothers in the village tonight. The familiar scene reminded her of how only a week ago on a similar afternoon, she and Miroku had sat by the road in Kaede's village, watching life pass in its quiet, comfortable way, before this new mess had truly started.

As if to complete the resemblance, she heard footsteps from behind, and Miroku set himself down beside her. She edged cautiously away, but not too far. Miroku's lechery was, while unwelcome, at least familiar. He made smoothing motions in the air with his hands before clasping them around his staff, indicating that he wasn't in the mood for donating his attentions tonight. She did not move closer, but she did not continue her retreat, either. They sat silently, watching the dusty children run back and forth in front of them in wheeling patterns, like a quarreling flock of sparrows.

"What do you think of this?" he said softly. It was indication enough of how it weighed on both their minds that Sango did not have to ask what "this" was.

"Too much is happening too fast."

"I agree. I don't like it. The situation is too delicate for us to make mistakes."

Sango nodded in agreement, her expression moody. Discreet inquiries that morning had revealed the identity of the lord who had voiced his opposition in the audience the day before. Lord Uetake, who controlled the land surrounding a ford in the river that formed part of Shiroyama's border. A bad position to have an enemy occupy.

"And I think," she stated slowly, "that there is something they aren't telling us."

Miroku turned his head to watch her. "Do you?"

"They've been too accommodating. Aside from that one man, there was barely any protest when Inuyasha was announced as lord."

"In fact, one might almost think they wanted him to take the title," Miroku carefully completed her train of thought. "You think he's being set up?"

Sango shook her head and looked away. "I don't know."

Another brief silence fell over them. The scruffy children harried a ball back and forth amongst themselves, worrying at it with bony brown hands and feet. Sango rested her elbows on Hiraikotsu, propping up her chin as she absently tracked the ball's progress across the courtyard, the cries of its pursuers mingling with the faint chime of Miroku's shakujou as he shifted in thought.

"I wish Inuyasha were not so stubborn about this," he said at last, in an attempt to move the discussion in a less ominous, more productive direction. "It would be a lot easier to deal with if he would just let us help him."

"Inuyasha," Sango replied, her voice tight, "is stubborn about a lot of things."

Miroku caught the sudden change in her tone and threw her a curious glance. Was something about Inuyasha's recent behavior bothering her? Though she did not scowl, there was something very black about her expression as she watched the children race through the road, and her right hand traced the smoothed whorls of Hiraikotsu by memory – something she only seemed to do when deep in thought.

"He should not have growled at Lady Usei like that." The words were sharp and explosive, her expression still overcast.

_Is that what it is? The way he acted toward Lady Usei…?_

He watched Sango's face, now tense and dark in the midday shadows, puzzled at her frustration for a moment before it clicked. Sango's family. They were all dead, all but for Kohaku – and at this point Sango might even wish that he had died with the others. Miroku's family was dead as well – his father eaten up by Naraku's curse, and his mother long since dead by disease. Even Shippou was orphaned. In fact, up until recently, Kagome was the only one of their group who could claim a family.

Now Inuyasha had a chance to have one again and he wasn't doing anything about it. In fact, his reluctance to come to Shiroyama and his reaction to Lady Usei combined to give the impression that he intended to keep his newfound relation at arm's length.

Miroku found himself beginning to share Sango's anger. Inuyasha had a chance to have what they had all lost _and he was throwing it away._

Finally, he forced himself to look away from Sango's dark expression and back the lanky urchins running around blithely in front of them. "No," he answered her, "he shouldn't have." Miroku's hands shifted around his staff with a faint slide of sweaty skin across metal, tightening in thought.

---------------

Kagome sat at one of Shiroyama's battlements. Shippou rested beside her, bored and a little annoyed that he wasn't getting all of her attention. No, Kagome had been stewing over Inuyasha all day. They were, in fact, sitting at the battlements because from there they had a good view of the forest and the gates, and would be the first to know when he finally came back.

"This is really stupid. He's been gone for _hours._"

"I know, Shippou-chan."

"So let's go do something else. This is boring, and he's probably not going to show up anytime soon."

Kagome muttered something under her breath that sounded an awful lot like _"He'd better show up soon"_ before answering Shippou. "I want to talk to him before he has a chance to disappear again on us."

"Good luck," said Shippou, a little miffed. Inuyasha could be sneaky when he wanted to be. He had gotten enough lumps by ambush to know that.

Kagome sighed, annoyed and a little worried at Inuyasha's latest stunt. She couldn't honestly say she hadn't seen it coming. Inuyasha was ridiculously stubborn and possessed of a considerable amount of pride. It was entirely like him to maintain that he didn't _need_ help, despite knowing next to nothing about the situation and being obviously uncomfortable with it. If she had been thinking more clearly, she might have tried broaching the matter with a bit more subtlety, but her frustration over his behavior had been building for the entire week, and in the wake of the disaster with the floor… any delicacy she might have applied to the subject had gone sailing out the window.

Of course, the blame for the situation still rested ultimately on his shoulders.

_Pig-headed idiot. _

Well, the fact was he _did_ need help, and he was going to get it whether he liked it or not. He wasn't going to get away from them…get away from _her_ just by gallivanting off to parts unknown for a day. As soon as he got in that gate, she was going to corner him and give him a good talking to.

…That is, if she could get him to listen without being able to sit him.

With a small "_hmph-ing"_ noise, she turned her attention back to Shippou, who was sulking slightly at her absorption, and began to tell him one of the many stories of Souta's exploits with his friends, intent on guiding her thoughts off the brooding path they threatened to tread. So they passed the time until finally a flash of white caught her attention, deep in the forest, moving rapidly toward the road. She stood up from her post and scooped Shippou up onto her shoulder when he called up at her from the ground.

"He's coming, Shippou-chan! Let's go."

"Finally!"

-------------------

As Inuyasha and Shunsoku stepped through Shiroyama's gates, a small troop of servants poured out of nowhere to surround them. Inuyasha irritably disentangled himself from them, leaving Shunsoku to see to his horse and the lingering servants both, and strode toward the keep, his expression pensive.

The more he thought about the _thing_ on his mountain, the more uneasy he became. Stories about the mountain. Just what kind of stories? He hadn't wanted to ask Shunsoku – hadn't wanted to encourage him to keep asking nosy questions and, more importantly, hadn't wanted to let him know that he was uneasy about it.

Just as he reached one of the keep's side doors, he caught sight of Kagome, Shippou perched on her shoulder, bearing down on him at full speed.

"Inuyasha!"

He merely leveled her an annoyed glare before continuing on his way. If he knew Kagome, she still hadn't given up on the whole stupid "help" thing.

-------------------

Kagome slid to a momentary halt to grind out a brief epithet, and set Shippou on the ground again. If she were going to try and pry anything out of Inuyasha, it would be best not to give the two a chance to exchange taunts. Fortunately, she was quick enough to be able to catch a glimpse of his red clothing as she entered the door, moving rapidly but not quite yet out of sight. She followed him as discreetly as she could, hoping to corner him when he finally stopped.

At last, she reached a door at the end of the hallway he had gone down, and opened it to find a small garden. So this was where he'd disappeared to the night before. A twinge of exasperated amusement tugged at the edges of her mind. Trust Inuyasha to go to the trouble of finding a place with trees to brood in even in the midst of a castle.

Sure enough, she soon found him perched in the boughs of one of the garden's ornamental trees. The sight completely lacked the dignity and aloofness she had come to associate with Inuyasha's penchant for the arboreal, as the garden's trees had been pruned into painfully delicate asymmetry and purposely stunted to suit the small size of their environment. When Inuyasha took to the trees, he usually seemed so completely in his element that the scene's oddity was erased. Now however, he just looked ridiculous, perching grumpily on a low, thin branch, scowl firmly in place.

"Inuyasha!"

"What do you want?"

Kagome opened her mouth to tell him that she wanted him to stop being a stubborn idiot, but then thought better of it. Given how he had reacted the last time she had tried to get him to accept help, he would probably just close up immediately if she tried to go the same route. Of course, now that they were outside, she could always just sit him and _make_ him listen… but then he'd probably just get even more stubborn and refuse to change his mind no matter how much sense her arguments made. So, fishing for some way to lead into the argument with some of the subtlety she had been so blatantly lacking in previously, she said the other thing that had been on her mind that day.

"Just where were you?"

Inuyasha sent her a suspicious sidelong look. He was pretty sure Kagome hadn't followed him all the way out here just ask him what he'd done that day. He'd hoped to lose her when he'd gone into the keep, but she'd been just a little quicker in disentangling Shippou than he'd expected, and once inside he'd belatedly realized that he'd wind up looking really stupid in front of a lot of people if he raced through Shiroyama with Kagome in hot pursuit.

"Out."

"Out _where?_"

"Around."

"That isn't helpful, Inuyasha."

"What gave you the idea that I was trying to be helpful?"

Actually, what he was trying to do was get her to go away. His tour of Shiroyama had given him a lot to think about.

"Inuyasha!"

"Fine! We went around the mountain, ok? Happy?"

"Oh." Kagome sighed and did her best to forge ahead with the conversation. "So why'd you go around the mountain?" In other circumstances, she would have guessed that he was just trying to get away for a while, but he wouldn't have taken Shunsoku with him to do that.

"Had to make sure there weren't any youkai around to worry about," he replied sullenly.

"I take it there weren't." If there were, she was sure Shunsoku would have looked more traumatized on their return.

A short pause on Inuyasha's part as he turned his head away, suddenly completely serious.

"No. There weren't." _They all got frightened off by something stronger._ Inuyasha's fingers rapped absently against the branch he sat on as he frowned in thought. The worst of it was that he didn't even know _what_ it was. When he went to investigate it, as he would eventually have to, he would be going in blind.

"Inuyasha?" Kagome looked up at him, clearly annoyed, her brows starting to draw together as they always did when she was worried.

Inuyasha drew in a sharp breath. _Kagome…Kagome can sense the shards of the Shikon no Tama…_

"Do you sense anything odd about the mountain?"

"Eh?" she said, blinking at the sudden shift in topic. "Do you mean Shikon shards?" she asked, probing. It wouldn't do to go off on a shard-hunt now. Inuyasha merely made an annoyed hand gesture.

"No. Just see if you can find anything."

Kagome raised a skeptical eyebrow before closing her eyes to better concentrate. This conversation had taken a decidedly strange turn, but Inuyasha suddenly seemed almost…grim. Staring at the liquid darkness inside her eyelids, she extended that indescribable sense she used to find the Shikon shards, feeling first a powerful, turbulent surge of awareness as her inspection slid over Inuyasha, and then smaller flickerings of energy as she encountered lesser youkai nearby. Shippou registered as a bright, pulsing spark, and Kirara as a banked hearth – smoldering, but needing little incitement to blaze up. As her awareness extended beyond the keep's walls, she felt the sudden preponderance of the heavy, polished solidity of 'mountain.' She pushed her senses further, traveling up its pale-stoned slopes, and finally, perhaps midway up, discovered something anomalous.

Whatever it was, it was powerful and carried the forceful sense of sentience that most strong demons did. It was not, however, youkai. In some indescribable way, it did not _taste_ like a youkai to her sixth sense. Her umbrella of awareness over the region collapsed abruptly, and she slowly blinked and sat up from the slouch she had automatically adopted. Her mouth felt dry and her eyelids tight, so she scrunched her face a little to try and get it back to normal.

"Well?"

Inuyasha had at some time during her scan dropped out of his tree and moved to sit across from her, and now voiced his query in a mixture of impatience and worry. She made a face at him before leaning forward to reply.

"You're right. There's definitely something there."

"Can you tell what it is?"

"No," she replied, shaking her head. "Exactly what brought this on?"

Inuyasha shifted uncomfortably, but continued to look straight at her, an ear flicking briefly in what could have been nervousness or uncertainty. "There are no youkai in Shiroyama," he stated flatly.

"What? None at all?" That didn't make any sense. Every place they went seemed to have its youkai.

"None."

"And you think this has something to do with whatever it is that's living on the mountain?" she asked carefully.

Inuyasha averted his gaze. "Keh. Well, something's sure scaring them away."

Silence held for a minute as they both pondered that disturbing piece of information. Finally Kagome mentally shook herself out of her reverie and remembered the original purpose of the conversation. Maybe this was what she needed to get him to let them help. He had actually requested her aid in investigating the entity on the mountain. Of course, she doubted that he had had any intention of doing so or that he had even thought about it, and he would probably just deny it if she pointed it out to him… but this was a situation in which she could do what Inuyasha clearly couldn't.

She could ask the people in Shiroyama about it. People skills not being Inuyasha's strong suit, she doubted it would even occur to him to question them. And if it did, those he interrogated would most likely be less than forthcoming. If she did that and managed to find some clue to what it was up there on the mountain… Inuyasha must be very much disturbed by it to ask her to look for it, and so would have no choice but to accept the information. It might prove to him that there were things involved in this task that he couldn't handle himself – but that they could. It might persuade him that he needed their help.

A few minutes of watching Inuyasha look sullen and thoughtful convinced her that the conversation was at its end, and she got up to go, seeing his head suddenly lift as he tracked the movement.

"All right. I'll leave you to it, then."

Inuyasha watched her go, puzzled and not a little wary of that unexpectedly non-confrontational farewell.

------------------

As she exited the garden, she was met with the sight of Sango leaning nonchalantly against the opposite wall, well out of line of sight from the door. Kagome's eyebrows raised, and Sango hastily put her a finger to her mouth, indicating quiet while flicking her gaze to the door. She caught the hint and moved quickly on her way, Sango falling into step at her side with the noiseless grace of a shadow. Once they were well away from Inuyasha's chamber, they drifted to the hall's side and Kagome began the interrogation.

"Sango? You were eavesdropping?"

"No." A brief, rather wry smile crossed the older girl's face as she shook her head in answer. "Inuyasha is very difficult to eavesdrop on. I heard he'd got back and was looking for you so we could go talk to him, but I take it you beat us to it."

"Mm-hmm."

Kagome recounted the whole of her conversation with Inuyasha and Sango listened intently, nodding occasionally. When she got to Inuyasha's newest worry, Sango interjected with a series of questions.

"Something living on the mountain? A youkai?"

"Not a youkai. I sensed it when I looked for it, but I don't know what it was."

Sango considered a moment, head tilted in thought, before replying.

"Maybe it was a kami."

Kagome considered the suggestion. Though she had met a kami before, the impression it had left on her sixth sense had been nothing like that of the mountain's inhabitant. The lake kami had felt bright and active, her psychic print marked by complex layers, nothing at all like the solid, nearly opaque presence she felt on the mountain. Then again, not all youkai felt the same to her, so there was no ruling out the possibility.

"Maybe… But why would the youkai avoid it?"

Sango nodded her head in acknowledgement of the point, and Kagome cleared her throat a little nervously.

"I was thinking that maybe we should ask around about it. If it is a kami, the people here ought to know something about it, right?

Sango gave her a considering look, perhaps guessing at the cause of her sudden motivation, but said nothing.

"Yes, someone should know something about it." Another short pause came before she continued. "If you like, the houshi and I will talk to the people in the village and you can have the keep."

A brief smile lit Kagome's face. "You'll help? Thanks Sango."

"Don't mention it." A frown crossed Sango's features before she resumed her speech, a crisp deliberateness notable in her voice that had not been there before. "Perhaps you should first try to talk to Lady Usei? She probably knows a lot about Shiroyama's history."

"Oh! That's a good idea. But do you think they'll let me talk to her?"

"Probably." Sango smiled in amusement. "I doubt they can refuse Lord Inuyasha's friends."

Kagome just barely had time to snort, "Lord Inuyasha indeed!" before she collapsed into a fit of giggles.

* * *

**AN:** First and foremost, many thanks to Chri for beta-reading. This chapter has benefited greatly from his advice.

Well. Long time, no update. I'll try not to let that happen again, but while school's still in session, I can't guarantee anything. No matter what happens, though, this thing isn't dead. In any case, thanks for sticking around and reading it. I hope it was worth the wait in the end.

AmunRa – Hm. See what you mean about the past. I guess it is a bit deceptive. Glad you're enjoying the way the story's progressing, though. Hopefully I'll be able to sustain your interest for the entire thing.

Calendar – Absolutely. You should feel very special. Now you're the first reviewer to growl at me. ;) Seriously, though, thanks.

Kristen Sharpe – Glad you're still excited about this – I am too, so this ought to prove a mutually beneficial relationship.

Kris-chan – I know I sometimes go overboard on the detail (which makes the story rather unreadable), so it's comforting to know that you're getting the effect I intended. As for the politics, I'm going to keep my mouth firmly shut on the matter of who is up to what, but suffice to say that the situation is complicated enough that I have it plotted down in scratchy handwriting and taped to the wall next to my computer.

Karris – Well, I need to live up to my major, after all. I'm glad that it feels authentic, though – I am doing a bit of research for this story (partially, admittedly, because I'm a masochist like that and I like research), and I'm happy that it's paying off.

Melodylink – Vale…? Hablas espanol? Vaya, chica… Anyway, don't worry about it – I didn't think you were heckling me about updates. And even if you had, given the significant time lapse between the last chapter and this, I could hardly blame you. In any case, thanks for reading, and I hope you continue to enjoy it.

empressinuyasha – Wow, I'm flattered. Thanks! Glad I managed to fill a mostly-empty niche in IY fanfiction.

keebler-elmo – Story is by no means ditched. Will definitely be finished.

Tory.Annon – Trust me, you're by no means the world's worst reviewer. Thanks for reading (and reviewing)!

Thiemo Günther – Thanks for your honest review. Funny about the similarity you noted in the opening chapter to Ranma ½ - I've never read the manga. Pure luck, I guess, that it came out that way. In any case, as you can now see, abuse of the "sit" command won't be an issue here – it annoys me to no end when Kagome starts using it right and left in a story. I won't comment in any depth on the rest of your review, as I don't want to spoil my own story, but many thanks for your opinion, and I hope you continue to enjoy it!

Selenity Jade – I already told you most of what I wanted to say, so I won't repeat myself here, but I've got to thank you once again, at least – you completely bowled me over (in a good way!) with all those reviews in quick succession. :)

And that's it for now. Once again, many thanks to all of you for reading, and I hope that you enjoyed it.


	6. Uphill Battle

Chapter Six: Uphill Battle

Kagome stood poised at the door to Lady Usei's room, a sudden upwelling of awkwardness causing her to hesitate momentarily before rapping at the door. An invitation to enter came in quick response to her knock, its reedy tone clear through the shoji. Kagome slid the door aside and stepped forward into a small room, bright with the sunlight falling through a door left half-open to the courtyard. To her left, Lady Usei rose from a low desk, a flurry of paper stirring and sighing in her wake.

"Kagome-san? Is something wrong? Do you need anything?"

Seeing the concerned expression on Lady Usei's face, Kagome felt slightly guilty that she had come only to pump her for information. Inuyasha's cousin had made a good impression on her in their previous brief meeting. Kagome had before found her shy and painfully well-bred, and now could not help but feel touched at the apparently sincere anxiety for her well-being. She wondered if Lady Usei was lonely – there was no one else in the room, and aside from the erstwhile maids of the day before, Kagome had seen no one in Shiroyama who might serve as her companion.

"No, nothing's wrong." She bit her lip lightly before she continued, wanting to find out about the mountain and its inhabitant without seeming cold about it or unnecessarily worrying Lady Usei – after all, what if she didn't _know_ there was something living there?

Besides, she wanted to get to know Inuyasha's cousin better.

"I was just curious about Shiroyama, and I was hoping you could tell me a bit about it, if it's not too much trouble."

A weak excuse to talk, but Lady Usei seemed to welcome it anyway. Her features relaxed, and she sent Kagome a tentative, slightly relieved smile. "Oh, it's no trouble at all. If you like, we can sit by the door and talk, since there's a nice breeze today."

Kagome felt herself smile in return. "That sounds good."

Silence held as they made their way to the other door and sat, uncomfortable not with the tension of hostility, but rather with the awkwardness of not knowing each other.

Lady Usei was the first to speak.

"What did you want to know?"

Kagome, now decided on asking about the mountain in a more circuitous fashion than she had first intended, had to think for a moment before she came up with an innocent-seeming question that might conceivably lead in a profitable direction.

"Shiroyama is beautiful place – how long has your family been here?"

"As long as anyone can remember, though I think it was my great-great-grandfather who built the castle." Here, Lady Usei paused and frowned, suddenly looking wistful. "I'm sorry – if you're interested in history, Lady Hoshiyo could have told you more, but she died last winter."

"Oh… I'm sorry." Kagome gave a mental wince. She had not meant to bring up a painful topic.

Lady Usei smiled weakly. "It's all right. She had been sick for a couple of years, so it wasn't unexpected, just…sudden."

"Oh."

Lady Usei's face was sad and contemplative, her eyes bright and unfocused with the sheen of remembrance. Kagome watched her for a moment before asking gently, "What was she like?"

Her companion gave a thoughtful pause before speaking, picking through her memories in search of the right ones to tell a stranger.

"She was my nurse when I was little. She was very old – I think she might even have been my mother's nurse when _she_ was little." Lady Usei smiled fondly. "She knew a lot about Shiroyama – she used to tell me stories all the time."

Kagome felt a further pinch of sympathy for her. Lady Hoshiyo sounded a bit like her grandfather. She couldn't imagine what it would be like to lose Jii-chan.

"What kind of stories did she tell?"

Lady Usei suddenly giggled, the shift in manner surprising Kagome. The solemnity of the conversation and the careful politeness of her speech patterns made it easy to forget that Lady Usei was about her own age. Now she suddenly looked the fourteen or fifteen years she had to be, all the formality stripped away momentarily at what must be a good memory. Kagome gave her a smile in return, relieved that the conversation seemed to be moving in a happier direction. Perhaps they might become friends.

"Well, there was the one about the tanuki who used to play the same trick on the villagers every year – everyone was used to it by then, so it didn't bother them much, but I can only imagine what a stir it must have caused when they first did it. What would happen was that, a few nights after every rice harvest, someone would go to check on the crop and find that all the rice grains had been turned into pebbles."

"Oh dear. So what did they have to do to get their rice back?"

"Well, the first time it happened everyone was really worried – it was an entire harvest, after all. They were going to ask the priest to do something about it, but then someone left a couple of jugs of sake unattended. When he came back, the sake was gone and the rice was rice again. After that, everyone pretty much knew what they had to do to get their harvest back."

Kagome smiled, imagining a younger, more mischievous version of Miroku's friend Hachi seizing eagerly upon an unattended bottle. "So does this still happen?"

Lady Usei shook her head sadly. "No, it stopped in my great-grandmother's time."

"Oh…"

_"There are no youkai in Shiroyama."_ Inuyasha's words came back to her. Had the thing on the mountain moved in when the tanuki left? Had the tanuki left because it came?

"What other stories did Lady Hoshiyo tell?"

Lady Usei thought for a minute, folding her hands in her lap and absently smoothing the fabric of her kimono. "Well, there were some hazy ones about the mountain, but those aren't the most interesting…"

Kagome felt her heart give a jump and rather frantically motioned her to continue.

"No, please tell me. I'd love to hear them."

"There isn't really much to tell," she said apologetically. "The mountain used to have a kami – there's still a fane halfway up the slope. It was the tradition for the lord and his heir to perform a rite in his honor there once a year, but after my great-grandfather and his son were killed on the way there, that stopped."

"Were killed?" Kagome's heart drummed at her ribs. _In the time of her great-grandparents…didn't she say that the tanuki left then?_

Lady Usei gave her a curious look, but shrugged. "I never heard much about it. I suppose they must have fallen over the edge at some point – the trail can be dangerous during some parts of the year."

Silence fell over them as Kagome tried to make sense of the story. Had the kami grown angry with humans for some reason? Lady Usei's great-grandfather and his son had been killed on the mountain… But then why would it drive out the youkai? Maybe it wasn't really the kami after all… but a mountain-dwelling kami seemed too much of a coincidence.

A hesitant question from Lady Usei broke the lull in the conversation.

"Um…Kagome-san? Is Inuyasha… doing all right here? I saw the audience with the lords…"

Kagome shook herself out of her reverie with a slight wince at the thought of the audience and the following disastrous confrontation with Inuyasha. Setting aside the unpleasant memories, she pulled up a smile for the other girl's benefit.

"It could have been much worse." That much was certainly true. "Nothing really went wrong – it was just rather uncomfortable." She smiled again, this time more genuinely. "I don't think you have to worry about anything – Inuyasha's common sense may seem to be lacking sometimes, but he's stubborn and usually manages to get things to work out right in the end."

Lady Usei nodded silently, still looking rather dubious. Kagome, on seeing her face, gave a mental sigh. She would have liked to give some further assurance, but there really wasn't much she could say with things in their present state and Inuyasha in his current mood. Any hopes she might have held for ipso facto family bonding between the cousins were rapidly eroding.

A sudden gust of wind ruffled their hair, distracting Kagome from the glum bent of her thoughts. She noticed with amusement a few rebellious wisps of Lady Usei's hair had fallen out of her coiffure and into her face as they had on their previous meeting. With a childish pout and snort, Lady Usei blew upwards to clear them out of her eyes and immediately afterward looked mortified that she had done so. Kagome spared her dignity and did not comment on the action, choosing instead to inspect the slightly rumpled sheet of paper the breeze had blown into her lap.

The gentle tan sheen of the rice paper was broken by the stark blackness of ink, splotched and dashed in clumsy kana. The words' edges wavered erratically as the brush's load was depleted and replenished, the lines occasionally blotting as the writer's hand pressed too heavily or drabbling off into stuttering dashes as the strokes grew unsure. Kagome squinted, trying to make some sense of the messy scrawl. When she did decipher it, she could not help but give a mental wince. _'Spring has come, but the scent of flowers inspires only sneezes.'_ Even twentieth-century absentee high school student Higurashi Kagome knew bad poetry when she heard it. Darting a glance to her companion, she noticed that Lady Usei's fingernails were rimmed in black and that her right sleeve had a still-damp, suspiciously inky-looking stain along its edge.

"Did you write these?"

Lady Usei glanced at the paper, gave a start and a blush, and turned her gaze down to her lap, one hand going up to tug absently at the recalcitrant strand of hair. "Yes," she mumbled, nearly inaudibly. "They're not very good."

Kagome felt her heart go out to her and gave her the warmest smile she could muster. Perhaps blood did tell after all – the reaction reminded her of Inuyasha's usual awkwardness in similar situations. Granted, Inuyasha's embarrassment often manifested itself in somewhat more uncouth fashion, but something about her attitude just then made Kagome half-expect to hear a "feh" out of Lady Usei's mouth.

"I'm supposed to be practicing them, but I don't think I'm getting any better."

"Oh…" Kagome frowned. She didn't know much about medieval poetry, but wanted to offer some comfort. "Studying is always hard… I have lessons to do, too."

Lady Usei's expression turned hopeful. "You do? Really?" Her hand released the lock of hair and came down to clasp its twin. "We could study together sometime. If you want to, that is."

"Sure. It would be nice to work with someone." Kagome could not help but smile at Lady Usei's barely suppressed animation, thinking that she really must be lonely. The worry of how she would explain her geometry homework to a feudal aristocrat belatedly crossed her mind, but she wouldn't let it dampen her mood – there would be time enough to deal with that later. For now, she had some clues on the mountain, and had gotten to know Inuyasha's cousin a little better – which counted in her book as an unqualified success.

---------------

Sango had never been overly fond of kitchens. The smoke from the hearth in her home had always made her eyes water and her nose run, and for that reason she had avoided indoor cooking whenever possible. In comparison to the chaos of the castle's kitchens, however, her house's smoky, _quiet_ fireside was an earthly paradise.

The roar of the fire competed with the hoarse calls of the rushing people who circled it like ships caught in a whirlpool, and the heavy, fetid mixed stink of sweat and myriad foods good, bad, burnt, raw, and rotting choked the air. Sango squinted against the burning itch of her eyelids, searching for Miroku.

At last she spotted him seated in a relatively out-of-the-way corner, ostensibly watching Shippou. It looked more to her like Miroku was watching the pantrymaids while Shippou, using his distraction and the general chaos to good advantage, tried to nab what morsels he could without attracting attention. His success was considerable, since of the pantrymaids who should have been watching the food, most were occupied in the frantic bustle of cooking, and the others either in avoiding Miroku or making eyes at him. For his part, the monk just smiled blithely from his seat in the corner, his expression not changing when Sango came to stand beside him.

The corner of her mouth twitched. After the seriousness and candor of their talk that morning, it somehow annoyed her that he could so cavalierly return to his ordinary routine.

As if sensing her thoughts, Miroku turned his head to look up at her from his seat.

"Why, Sango. What brings you here?"

"Houshi-sama. Inuyasha came back."

"Ah." Miroku's face took on a curious expression. "Where was he?"

Sango's lips gave another minute twitch, this time in exasperated amusement as she recalled what she had caught of Kagome's conversation with the hanyou.

"Out."

Miroku also had to give a small, tight smile at that. "I take it you talked to him, then."

"No, Kagome-chan did." Sango's expression darkened and she sighed, resisting the urge to rub her temples against an impending headache. "He thinks there's something powerful living on the mountain. He asked Kagome-chan to check, and she confirms it."

Miroku's face was thoughtful. "'Something powerful?' Not a youkai, then?"

"No. Inuyasha says there are no youkai in Shiroyama."

A brief pause, as Miroku absorbed the information.

"I told Kagome-chan we'd ask around the village and see if anyone knew anything about the mountain."

Miroku pursed his lips. "It's a good idea. If it's been up there any length of time, there are probably scores of stories about it. The temple we passed on the way in may know something about it too."

"I thought it might be a kami, but Kagome-chan wasn't sure."

Miroku got to his feet with a sigh and a stretch. "Only one way to find out, I suppose." After a brief scan of the room, he located Shippou, whose fingers were inches away from a bowl someone had carelessly left unattended. The monk deftly caught his hand before it could reach its target. "You shouldn't do that, Shippou; it's not polite to steal from your benefactors," he scolded absently.

Shippou scowled, resentful at being chastised only now and already feeling half-guilty and defensive. "You didn't say anything before! Besides, it's all Inuyasha's food now, anyway."

Miroku wearily massaged his forehead. He didn't need Shippou to go into a temper now. "If I had noticed you doing it before, I would have stopped you. Anyway, Inuyasha's not the one who's going to be eating most of it, so it's not really him you're taking it from."

Shippou sulked wordlessly. He knew Miroku was right, but that didn't mean he was going to admit it.

Miroku was apparently satisfied with his silence. "Do you want to come to the village with us, Shippou?"

Shippou was quiet for a moment as he pretended to think. He didn't want Miroku to think he was off the hook yet. At last, he replied, sure to inject the proper amount of snootiness into his tone. "Fine. There's nothing to do here, anyway."

"Good. Let's go," said Sango, though Shippou's inclusion in the excursion troubled her slightly. Of course they could not leave him unattended in the uncertain, politically-charged climate of the keep, nor could they send him to Kagome or Inuyasha at the moment. But she wondered how the villagers would react to his presence.

----------------

Sango might as well have been prescient. Their inquiry was so far a resounding failure. Though none of the villagers were outright rude, they were succinct, and extremely unwilling to talk about anything that might or might not be living on the mountain. They had all darted quick looks at Shippou before returning further questions with blunt denials of knowledge – which made them wonder if youkai were at the heart of the mystery after all.

Finally, tired and frustrated, they came to a halt.

"Houshi-sama, this isn't working."

"This is a waste of time," groused Shippou. "They won't tell us anything!"

Miroku frowned. They were all dusty and slightly sticky from the day's heat. The unsuccessful questioning had left none of them in the best of moods, and they had barely begun in earnest. They had yet to talk to any of those in the marketplace or temple, where information might be most plentiful.

Sango gave Shippou an apologetic pat on the head and voiced her suspicions.

"Actually, I think they might be nervous about talking to us because of you, Shippou-chan."

Shippou squirmed excitedly for a moment and puffed out his chest. "You mean they've heard of me?" Then the downside of his apparent notoriety struck him. "And they're not telling us anything because of that? That's not fair!"

Miroku glanced at the sun and sighed. They had already wasted a lot of time. "Perhaps we should split up?"

Reluctantly, Sango agreed with him. "It might not be a bad idea. You should probably be the one to ask in the temple anyway, Houshi-sama."

"Very well. If you and Shippou will see to the rest of the village, I'll ask in the marketplace and the temple."

----------------

An hour later, Miroku sat in an out-of-the-way corner of the marketplace, in no way encouraged by his investigations. Though it was true that the villagers had been much more willing to talk to him alone, he was not feeling any more enlightened on the subject of the mountain and its inhabitant.

The townsfolk almost always identified the thing on the mountain as a kami, but the reports on its exact nature were confused and diverse. They seemed to divide roughly into two groups, people as readily citing tales from one as from another.

In one version, the mountain's kami was Shiroyama's protector and steadfast ally. He preserved the territory from invasion and calamity, and gave his seal of approval to each successor to the lordship. He was described only and always as "white" – it was allegedly from him that Shiroyama – "white mountain" - took its name.

The other group of stories was grimmer by far. In them, the kami was a vengeful, capricious entity, easily offended and cruel in taking its recompense. Though it protected Shiroyama, its price for doing so was always high. Miroku could not help but wonder at the difference – it had not escaped his notice that the kami of the second version was never given a descriptor.

Were there really two different entities? Had one chased the other out? Were either of them really kami? What – if anything – did they have to do with the complete absence of youkai in Shiroyama?

Miroku sighed and began to make his way to the temple at the other end of the marketplace, stepping carefully around the peddlers' displays of goods. Perhaps the priest knew something more.

-------------

The temple itself was an unimpressive building. It seemed too small for the market that had grown up around it, and its timbers too worn and dingy. Nevertheless, it was well-kept, its entrance swept clean and the implements of faith worn by long use but spotless with care. The temple's priest blended perfectly into his environment, an old man with a slight hunch and a bald pate as brightly polished as one of his incense bowls.

"Excuse me, sir."

"Afternoon to you." The priest squinted a bit and leaned forward. "A man of the cloth? Come to pay your respects?"

Miroku bowed and spoke in his smoothest, most professional tone. "Yes, a humble servant of Buddha passing through."

Once again, the priest inclined forward in inspection, looking him up and down. "Not an e-toki houshi are you?"1 A snort. "We got enough of them cluttering up the doors. It's all well and good to tell the fables and show the stories, but not when it prevents the faithful from entering the temple."

Miroku put on a solicitous expression, inwardly amused. It was true that he had had to sidestep a few of the traveling holy men on his way in, but they had not taken up so much space or drawn so many people as to block the entrance to the temple proper. The priest was most likely just irked that his parishioners chose to patronize frivolous storytelling monks of dubious origins over his more sober and familiar establishment.

"No, I'm an exorcist by trade."

At this, the priest's previously blandly welcoming expression took on a new spark of interest. His eyes opened wider and he resettled his staff to stand a little straighter.

"Ah, now that's an honorable service to provide. I used to do a bit of that myself before I came here. Tell me, what do you think of our humble realm?"

Miroku saw the opening and seized his opportunity. "Shiroyama seems to be a most remarkable place. Not once have I felt a demonic aura here."

The priest nodded firmly, unsurprised. "And you won't, either." He stepped closer, craning his neck up conspiratorially. Miroku cooperatively leaned forward in his turn, taking on the pose of a fellow conspirator.

"You're an exorcist – you know the tricks of the trade. Some ghosts – even some demons – will go away quietly if you offer them the right things. But some of 'em don't go unless they're scared you can call on something stronger to kick them out."

"So it is," remarked Miroku, nodding politely, hiding his excitement at this turn of the conversation behind an unruffled demeanor. The priest nodded back to him and resumed the tale, flying over the break in his narrative as if it had never happened.

"Normally for those you got to use your own power or invoke the Bodhisattvas. No matter what, the thing is, you have to call on an outside source." Now the old man grinned a little, but dryly and without humor. "See, here, there's something in Shiroyama itself that keeps the demons out."

"Really? I've never seen anything of the like. What is it?" asked Miroku, genuinely curious.

"It's Lady Chinatsu. Her husband and son were killed by 'em over fifty years ago. She died soon after and she's been pushing them out ever since." The old man paused, his expression regretful. "We don't like to talk about it too much – don't want to disturb her and get her any more riled – but didn't want you to try exorcising her without knowing who she was."

Miroku nodded gravely. "I can certainly understand your concern."

_So that's what's kept the youkai out. A vengeful ghost…_

The idea was unsettling. A spirit powerful enough to render an entire state youkai-free was nothing to sneeze at. Unappeased ghosts were powerful and difficult to deal with – and this one had apparently been allowed to go unappeased for almost half a century.

_How long before she turns her attention to Inuyasha and Shippou? And if she were laid to rest, how much trouble would it invite from youkai looking to move in on Shiroyama?_

"Has nobody tried to appease her?"

The priest shook his head sadly. "Don't go thinking we're so cruel as to let her stay angry just because she helps us out a bit like that. We've been trying to calm her down for years, but… The priest who was here before me was the last one to try and lay her to rest. Went up the mountain…"

Miroku froze. "Up the mountain?"

The priest nodded. "That's where she's buried. Wanted to be near where her husband and son died. He went up there and she blew him off like he was nothing. Came back down dazed – couldn't remember anything in the last three days – and was never quite right afterwards. Saw strange things in plain daylight right up till the day he died." The old man shrugged, looking resigned. "I'll someday try to lay her to rest too, but I'll wait until I have a successor ready. In the meantime, it seems like there's no way to calm her down and she provides a valuable service – no reason not to let her do it for a while."

"I see."

Miroku let out a long, slow breath, now even more worried. Though they now knew beyond any doubt the mountain's inhabitant, it left them – more specifically, it left Inuyasha – in a dangerous, difficult position. The duty of pacifying Lady Chinatsu should fall to him both in his capacity as Shiroyama's lord and as her descendent.

Unfortunately, the fact that he was hanyou would undoubtedly complicate matters immensely.

The priest's dry voice broke into his thoughts. "What's your name, exorcist?"

"I am Miroku. May I ask your name in return?"

"I'm Doppo. Do you need a place to stay the night? The temple is always open to travelers."

"Thank you for your kind offer, but since I may be in Shiroyama for some time, I've already made arrangements to stay at the castle."

"At the castle?" Doppo's interest visibly perked. "Have you seen the lord? Is it true that he's a youkai?"

Miroku's lips gave a twitch before tightening minutely. They would all have to face such questioning soon, once Inuyasha and their group became commonly known. Best to make a start in dealing with it.

"It is true that he has some youkai blood – I came here with him."

The priest's eyes narrowed. "You came here with him? I thought you said you were an exorcist," he questioned flatly.

"I am," answered Miroku, his tone equally level. Doppo gave him a hard, considering stare and seemed to mull over the information, his fingers tapping absently at the staff he leaned on in slow, irregular rhythm. Miroku remained calm under the inspection, his expression pleasantly neutral. At last, the old man seemed to come to a conclusion.

"I suppose," he said slowly and deliberately, "you must have your reasons. Just watch your back. Lady Chinatsu won't like it. I'm amazed she hasn't kicked him out already."

Miroku bowed. "I will. Your concern is much appreciated."

Again Doppo paused in contemplation before speaking. "If you need any help, come and find me."

Miroku was unsure whether the help he referred to was intended as an offer of aid to himself and Inuyasha, or simply as an offer to exorcise Inuyasha should the need arise, but thanked Doppo anyway and hurried out of the temple to find Sango and Shippou. The rest of the group needed to be told at once of Lady Chinatsu.

-----------------

The three quickly reconvened in the village to compare notes before heading back to the castle. Though Sango and Shippou had found nothing further of note in the village's fringes, Miroku's tale more than made up for it. After hearing it, they made no delay in hurrying back.

No sooner were they in the gates than they met Kagome. She was waiting for them to the side of the main entrance, her face alight with a triumphant expression.

"Sango-chan! You're back! Did you have any luck?"

"Shippou-chan and I didn't find much, but Houshi-sama did."

Miroku nodded in confirmation. "I talked with the temple priest. It seems fairly sure that a vengeful ghost on the mountain is keeping the youkai out."

Kagome's eyebrows rose in surprise. "A vengeful ghost? Lady Usei said that there was a kami on the mountain…"

"The villagers talked about a kami too," said Sango. "We had just thought they were confusing the ghost with a legend."

Miroku pursed his lips in thought, tapping his fingers against his staff. "Is it possible that the kami and ghost are both on the mountain? It seems strange that a kami would let an unappeased spirit take up residence in its home, but… Kagome-sama, what exactly did Lady Usei say?"

Kagome launched into a brief recounting of the tale, but was quickly stopped when she reached the death of Lady Usei's great-grandfather and his son.

"Wait – Kagome-chan, this happened in the time of her great-grandparents?"

"Yes."

Miroku had also caught the connection Sango had made. "Lady Chinatsu wants to avenge her husband and son. The priest said they were killed by youkai."

"Oh." Kagome bit her lip. "Do you think…?"

Sango nodded. "It's possible that it's the same incident."

Shippou, who had been growing impatient at the conversation, finally burst out, "So which is it? The kami, the ghost or a youkai?"

Kagome sighed. "I don't know, Shippou-chan."

"Whatever it is, we need to tell Inuyasha about it as soon as possible," said Miroku. "Especially if it's his great-grandmother's ghost."

Kagome nodded sharply. "You're right. He's probably still brooding in the garden."

"Let's go, then."

-------------

They found Inuyasha in the courtyard as predicted, leaning up against a tree trunk and absently whittling a twig down to nothing with his claws, his expression tense and dark. The guards at the courtyard's doorways eyed him warily, but he was paying them no mind, making Kagome wonder if he were so completely lost in thought as to not notice them. On hearing their approach, however, his head snapped up, and he tossed the twig away before crossing his arms and settling into the habitual, closed stance he used in arguments.

"What is it?"

Kagome held back a sour expression at the curt tone. She still hoped that this might show him that it would be best to accept their help, but wasn't naïve enough to think he would concede the point without a fight. They did have some leads on the mountain, though, and if Inuyasha wanted to know about them – as she was sure he did – then he would have to hear them out. She doubted he would do it quietly, though, and accordingly took a deep breath to steel herself before beginning.

"We asked around a little about the thing you found on the mountain. Nobody knows anything completely certain, but there are a lot of things that…"

"Wait," Inuyasha interrupted, an unpleasant sinking feeling settling behind his ribs. "You told them?"

Kagome lifted her head defiantly to meet his eyes. "Of course I told them. They're our friends. Don't tell me you expected me to stay quiet about it and let you keep brooding over it."

Inuyasha scowled hard and his voice rose as he replied. "I didn't want you to drag them into it!"

Kagome sighed. "It's not classified information, Inuyasha."

"It's not _gossip, _either!" he spat.

Sango interrupted them, her tone of voice deliberately level as she attempted to prevent the altercation from getting out of hand.

"I would hardly call it gossiping, Inuyasha. Kagome-chan did the sensible thing by telling us and asking us to help investigate it."

Inuyasha opened his mouth, but before he could protest, Miroku overrode him.

"Sango is right. If Kagome-sama had not taken the initiative as she did, we would still know nothing about the mountain. Now, thanks to her, we at least have some clues. She was doing her best to help you, and in fact has helped you quite a bit by this."

Inuyasha still looked mutinous, plainly unwilling to be moved by reason. Miroku resisted the urge to knock him over the head. While it was entirely like Inuyasha to be unreasonably stubborn in a general sort of way, the specific brand of hardheadedness he was displaying in this particular matter was really getting on Miroku's nerves. His own recent conversation with Sango had done nothing to dull the edge of his irritation at the hanyou's behavior. Inuyasha had a great opportunity in Shiroyama, and if he couldn't be persuaded to do the sensible thing and take all the help he could get, the idiot stood a good chance of losing it. His breath hissed through his teeth, and his next words came out more sharply than he intended them to.

"Inuyasha, you can either take it or leave it, but if I were you, I'd do the smart thing and accept her help."

Inuyasha bristled at the reprimand. If they thought they could meddle in his problems and have him just keep quiet and let them lecture him, they had another thing coming.

"You shut up, bouzu! I didn't ask for any fucking help in the first place!"

Kagome's expression suddenly darkened and she put her hands on her hips, all thoughts of logical persuasion and reasonable conversation flown at the harsh rebuff.

"You jerk! I was trying to do you a favor!"

"Well, you should have just kept your favors to yourself!"

"What am I supposed to do?" she snapped. "Just let you muddle through it on your own and make stupid mistakes that could be avoided if you'd just quit being so pig-headed and stop pushing us out of it?"

Inuyasha's scowl deepened even further and he practically snarled his next words.

"I'm pushing you out of it because it's _none of your business!_"

"It _is_ our business!"

"No it's not, and you all -" he hissed, directing a glare and pointing to include the other three"- need to stay the hell out of it! So just drop it and keep your noses out of my problem!"

And with that, he stomped off toward the courtyard's exit, the guard at the door stepping hastily out of his way.

A moment of quiet while they stared after him, and then Miroku's staff rang a harsh clash of discordant notes as he tapped its end firmly on the ground. "This," he ground out, "is ridiculous." With a sharp, precise movement, he lifted the staff again and moved to follow Inuyasha, the flat slaps of his sandals punctuated by further angry cacophony from the shakujou's rings as he strode toward the door.

_Somebody_ in this situation had to be an adult and knock some sense into their wayward friend.

* * *

1 - E-toki houshi – "Picture-explaining priest." Itinerant priest. On coming to a town, they would settle down in the marketplace (usually in front of a temple) and tell religious parables with the aid of illustrations. The female equivalent were called Kumano bikuni. Generally speaking, traveling religious practitioners (along with more secular traveling entertainers) had a reputation as a somewhat scruffy bunch. Miroku himself is a pretty good example of this.

AN: First and foremost, enormous thanks go to Chri for a thorough and insightful beta-reading (especially thanks for your help with the last scene!) and to Aoi for her sharp and honest opinions.

Next, a couple of notes concerning the story itself: (No, it's not dead!)

_Thicker Than Water_ will be changed to an R rating within the next few days – the current stay of PG-13 is meant to give advance notice to anyone who habitually doesn't check the R section. It was slated for a ratings change in the future, but with 's recent policy, I feel it better to switch sooner than necessary. By now, you should all know that this story makes some pretty liberal use of Japanese folktales and mythology. This is my one and only disclaimer for future liberal use of same. Takahashi herself certainly isn't sticking strictly to them, and neither will I. Just thought I ought to make that clear. 

And lastly, I know – my update habits suck. Please be assured that this isn't due to any lack of interest on my part, but rather a lack of time. Entering my last year of college and attempting to figure out a grad school and fellowships tends to eat up a good part of my free time. In any case, this story is not dead, and will not be dead in the foreseeable future. For those of you who've stuck with it (and those new to it), thank you for reading, and I hope you continue to enjoy it.

Melodylink – I guess I sort of quashed your hopes for a quick(er) update, didn't I? Sure you aren't getting frustrated with the unrushed storyline in light of that? ;) I'm glad the story strikes you that way, though – it is the effect I was hoping for.

Silver Nitte iz – Thanks for the compliments! I'm trying to avoid clichéd Inuyasha-Kagome fights. Happy to know I'm getting some part of it right.

Kris-chan – Well, Inuyasha is my favorite character in the series, so… I'm glad you think I'm doing him justice. As for the future course of the plot, all I can say is that there will be numerous complications, both political and supernatural.

Karris – As always, I'm flattered. As for my (alleged) extensive vocabulary, you should thank my beta-readers that it comes out enjoyably and I don't drown you all in a sea of overly flowery prose. ;)

Scripted Muse – I'm glad the problems you found earlier eased off as the story went along – I often find that it takes me a few chapters to warm up my characterizations. (Hopefully, I haven't jinxed this chapter's characterization by saying that.) I'm glad you're enjoying the story, though, and I hope I don't drive you nuts with infrequent updates.

Chri – You already know what I had to say, but I can't skip over you. ;) Thanks again, though – you've been a great help.

Redmage2 – Well, I generally figure that most readers are more interested in what the characters are doing than in anything I say, so it makes more sense to put the notes at the end. Glad the story caught your interest, in any case. (Suppose I should think of a better summary, though. ;))

Nani – Thanks for the compliments! Hope it wasn't too bad of a cliff-hanger last time. (Well, perhaps not. The one for this chapter is pretty bad – hadn't even realized it till I reread your review.)

Skittles the Sugar Fairy – Ask and ye shall receive. Don't expect me to make a regular thing of it, though. ;)

Shaid – It's a given that this fic is in a constant state of continuation. Just very, very slowly. It's not going to die anytime in the foreseeable future.

Selenity Jade – Thank you very much for all your reviews – it always makes my day to see what you have to say. Hope you continue to enjoy.


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